Kalwant Singh, an Indian-origin Malaysian drug trafficker, is to be executed early Thursday after a Singapore court dismissed a last-minute appeal to delay his sentence, according to a Hindustan Times report.
This comes two months after authorities executed another Indian-Malaysian drug trafficker - Nagaenthran Dharmalingam, 34 - whose lawyers and family appealed on grounds he was mentally disabled.
Singh, 32, was convicted in 2016 of trafficking heroin into the city-state and sentenced to be hanged to death. He had sought a review on grounds he had given information that helped arrest a key suspected drug trafficker.
The Anti-Death Penalty Asia Network on behalf of Singh wrote to the Singapore embassy, asking for the execution to be suspended.
However, the embassy pointed out Singh had been threatened with violence and forced to make drug deliveries to Singapore to repay a football gambling debt.
Notably, one of the co-accused in Kalwant Singh's case, news agency AFP said, had his sentence commuted after he cooperated with investigators.
But a three-judge panel dismissed Singh's appeal, citing an affidavit from the Central Narcotics Bureau saying it did not use any information he provided to arrest the suspect.
On the other hand, Singapore's apex court today reduced the jail term of an Indian-origin man who was convicted of raping a stranger's blindfolded girlfriend in a "threesome" planned without the woman's knowledge in 2016.
Srihari Mahendran, 26, was convicted after a High Court trial in 2020 and initially sentenced to 17 years and 10 months' jail and 14 strokes of the cane. The Court of Appeal on Wednesday reduced his jail term to 16 years and six months, citing the need for parity with his co-accused. His caning sentence was untouched, according to a Channel News Asia report.
