Murder of Manap Sarlip
On 1 July 2007, 29-year-old Manap Sarlip was found murdered outside his flat at Whampoa, Singapore. The police investigations led to the arrest of the killer, 17-year-old Muhammad Nasir Abdul Aziz, and Manap's 24-year-old wife Aniza Essa, who ordered and manipulated Nasir to kill Manap. Both of them were charged with murder and abetment of murder respectively. It was revealed that Aniza, who was in an unhappy marriage with Manap due to his abusive behaviour, had an affair with Nasir, who fell deeply in love with her; therefore, she instigated Nasir to help her kill her husband under the pretext that they would end up together without him. With her depression taken into account, Aniza was sentenced to nine years' imprisonment after pleading guilty to manslaughter. As for Nasir, he was found guilty of murder but was imprisoned indefinitely under the President's Pleasure since his age of 17 prevented him from receiving the death penalty under Singaporean law.
Background
Aniza Essa
Aniza Essa, born in 1982, studied up to Secondary 3 and dropped out. In September 2001, at the age of 19, she married her husband, Manap bin Sarlip; they had one son in 2006. Manap's eldest child from his first marriage, also a son, stayed with them. Manap worked as a disco jockey in a discotheque; he had been imprisoned for 21 months for desertion of national service, which he had been serving in the Singapore Civil Defence Force. The marriage between Aniza and Manap was unhappy; Manap was abusive towards his wife, who had to work two jobs during his absence to support herself and the two children. The abuse had gotten worse after Manap's release from jail on 15 August 2006. By 2006, Aniza was working at a pub; there, she met a 16-year-old Nasir, who would eventually become her lover.Muhammad Nasir Abdul Aziz
Aniza's colleague and lover, Muhammad Nasir Abdul Aziz, was born in September 1990; he had an older brother named Muhammad Khamil. Nasir's mother abandoned his family while he was an infant, with his parents divorcing when he was two months old. Nasir was raised by his aunt during his childhood. He left school in Secondary 3 to work and support his family; he took care of his father, who was suffering from poor health, and helped tend the father's shop. In 2006, Nasir met Aniza at the pub she was working at, which he frequented; the two began an affair after he became a bartender in February 2007. He was said to have fallen deeply in love with her, whom he regarded as the "most beautiful" woman he had seen.Murder plot and Manap's death
By mid June 2007, Aniza could no longer tolerate her husband's abuse, and she occasionally would confide to Nasir about the unhappiness and depression she suffered under Manap's abuse. Although Nasir advised Aniza to divorce her husband, Aniza stated she was afraid of Manap coming to harass her after the divorce and she also stated Manap would never consent to her request to divorce him.Eventually, Aniza formulated a plan to commit the murder of her husband, and she told Nasir to help her kill Manap. She also threatened to leave Nasir and entrust the task to her former boyfriend, should Nasir reject the offer, which she described as the only one chance for Nasir to show his love for Aniza. Afraid of losing Aniza, Nasir agreed to do the task. Initially, Nasir made the first attempt to assassinate Manap but after he saw a neighbour approaching Manap nearby his flat, Nasir had to abandon the task, and therefore, after further discussion with Aniza, Nasir contacted a friend nicknamed "Saigon" to help him find a hired professional killer to help do the job, but by the deadline of 29 June 2007 agreed upon by Nasir and Aniza, Saigon did not find one and he did not respond to Nasir's messages or phone call.
After failing to find a hired hitman to go after Manap, Nasir was faced with Aniza's insistence to commit the murder, and he promised to do so personally by the end of the month. On the night of 1 July 2007, Nasir wore a helmet and armed himself with a knife, and he waited outside Manap's matrimonial flat in Whampoa. When Manap returned home from work, Nasir wielded the knife to attack Manap and stabbed him several times on the neck. Manap, who met Nasir before and knew him, reportedly spoke in Malay, "Apa salah aku pada kau?", which was translated to mean "What wrong have I done to you?". Nasir did not reply and left the scene, but before he could take the lift at another level, he heard Manap's forlorn groans and cries in pain, and fearing that his sounds would alert the neighbours and he would not die from his wounds, Nasir returned to the outside of Manap's flat and stabbed him on the chest, thus leading to the death of 29-year-old Manap Sarlip. According to a forensic pathologist's report, Manap had been stabbed nine times on the neck and chest, and one of the knife wounds on Manap's chest was sufficient in the ordinary course of nature to cause death.
After Nasir killed Manap, he left the scene, and subsequently, Manap's corpse was discovered that same day and eventually, Nasir and Aniza were both arrested as suspects behind his death.
Investigations
On 3 July 2007, following some police investigations, both Aniza and Nasir were arrested and charged with abetment of murder and murder respectively. However, Nasir was 16 years and ten months old at the time of the murder, and hence if found guilty, he would not face the death penalty but be imprisoned indefinitely at the President's Pleasure instead, because minors who were aged below 18 cannot be executed. As for 24-year-old Aniza herself, she would be sentenced to hang if she was found guilty of abetting Manap's murder. Aniza's son reportedly did not wish to see his father's body. Subsequently, in March 2008, both Aniza and Nasir were ordered to stand trial on a later date.During police interrogation, Aniza blamed Nasir for having murdered her husband and claimed he plotted it all along. However, the police believed in Nasir's confession, in which he admitted to stabbing Manap to death under the instigation and manipulation of Aniza, whom he loved dearly and was afraid of losing her if he never kill Manap. Nasir was reportedly angered and felt betrayed when he heard that Aniza falsely accused him as the mastermind and pinned the whole blame on him. Nasir's family were genuinely shocked to hear that he had been arrested for murder, and were confused and in pain over his actions. Nasir's family also stated they were unaware that he had a relationship with a married woman all along before his arrest.
The case of Manap's murder happened on the same date as the Stirling Road murder in Queenstown, which involved an odd-job worker throwing his ex-wife down from the 13th floor of a HDB block and caused her to die from a fall. The perpetrator, Tharema Vejayan Govindasamy, was found guilty of murdering his ex-wife Smaelmeeral Abdul Aziz and given the death penalty in May 2009.
Trial of Aniza Essa
Conviction and sentencing
On 7 April 2008, Aniza was brought to trial at the High Court. By then, the murder charge against Aniza was reduced to a lesser offence of culpable homicide not amounting to murder, equivalent to manslaughter in Singapore's legal terms. The reduction of the murder charge meant that Aniza would not be sentenced to death, but she faced a potential sentence of either life in prison or up to ten years in jail. Her case was heard before Justice Chan Seng Onn for a sentencing trial.The reduction of Aniza's murder charge was made on the grounds of diminished responsibility. A government psychiatrist found that Aniza was suffering from depression and her condition, which was of moderate severity, substantially impaired her mental responsibility at the time of the crime, and also affected her judgement at the time she planned and executed the murder plot. The domestic abuse which Manap inflicted on Aniza and her financial concerns contributed to her depression, and she also felt a sense of helplessness and it caused her to fail to act positively to prevent Nasir from killing Manap on her behalf.
The prosecution sought the maximum sentence of life imprisonment for Aniza. They cited that Aniza was the mastermind of the murder, and she had ended the life of her husband in a cold-blooded and premeditated manner and even solicited Nasir, who had at all nothing to do with her marital issues, to stab her husband to death, and her conduct was extremely abhorrent and malicious that the emphasis of Aniza's sentence should be placed on the need for retribution and deterrence, to prevent any like-minded offenders from attempting to solicit the murder of their spouses or ex-spouses, and likened the case to that of the infamous-wife-killer Anthony Ler, who was found guilty of soliciting the murder of his wife by a 15-year-old student. On the other hand, Noor Mohamed Marican, Aniza's lawyer, pleaded for leniency and asked the court to not sentence Aniza to not more than ten years' jail, citing her unhappy and abusive marriage and her depression was still manageable with treatment and she would not pose an inherent threat to society.
By the order of Abdul Nasir Amer Hamsah's landmark appeal on 20 August 1997, life imprisonment is to be defined as a term of incarceration lasting the remainder of a convict's natural life, instead of the old definition of life imprisonment as 20 years in prison. The changes to the law was to be applied to future cases that took place after 20 August 1997. Since Aniza committed the crime of abetting manslaughter on 1 July 2007, around nine years and eleven months after the landmark ruling, and if she were to be sentenced to life in prison, Aniza would be imprisoned for the rest of her natural life.
After hearing the submissions, Justice Chan delivered his verdict on sentence. While he agreed that Aniza had psychologically manipulated a minor to commit the murder of her husband in extreme cold blood, he noted that Aniza's conduct was not especially abhorrent enough to warrant the imposition of a life sentence, since the psychiatric reports cited that Aniza's actions were a result of the impairment of her mental responsibility at the time and also affected her judgement, and her depressive episodes originated from the spousal abuse Manap had been inflicting upon her. Justice Chan also considered the sentencing guidelines, finding that Aniza's depression was of moderate severity and could still be treated, and she also showed a low risk of re-offending and could still lead a normal life after her release. He also stated that with a determinate jail term of up to ten years, Aniza, who was now the sole surviving parent of Manap's two children, would at least have a chance to be a better, matured mother and would learn her lesson, and her sons would not have her completely missing from the formative years of their lives. Hence, Justice Chan decided to sentence 25-year-old Aniza Essa to nine years' imprisonment, and backdate her jail term to the date of her arrest in July 2007.