Mathavakannan Kalimuthu
Mathavakannan Kalimuthu is a Singaporean who, together with his two friends, assaulted and murdered a gangster named Saravanan Michael Ramalingam on 26 May 1996. Mathavakannan, who was arrested on 4 July 1996, was tried and convicted of murder by the High Court of Singapore. As murder was a hanging offence in Singapore and since he was 16 days past his 18th birthday when he committed the murder, Mathavakannan was sentenced to suffer the mandatory sentence of death on 27 November of the same year he killed Saravanan. Mathavakannan's two accomplices were also found guilty and sentenced to death in the same trial.
Despite losing his appeal on 14 October 1997, Mathavakannan was granted clemency by President of Singapore Ong Teng Cheong, who commuted his sentence to life imprisonment on 28 April 1998 while his two friends were executed on 29 May 1998 after they failed to obtain clemency from the President. Mathavakannan served a total of 16 years in prison before he was released on 28 January 2012.
His case had attracted media attention once again on 28 November 2011 when he filed an appeal regarding the issue of his life sentence, whether it should be 20 years' imprisonment or imprisonment for the rest of his natural life in accordance with a landmark appeal by Abdul Nasir bin Amer Hamsah on 20 August 1997, which changed the definition of life imprisonment under the law. The High Court then allowed Mathavakannan's appeal, and he became a free man soon after and has led a low-profile life since his release.
Mathavakannan is the sixth death row inmate to have received clemency from the President of Singapore since 1965. The rarity of any President in Singapore pardoning a death row inmate from execution in Singapore was another factor that made Mathavakannan's case notable in the city-state and beyond its borders.
Early life
Mathavakannan Kalimuthu was born in Singapore on 10 May 1978. He was the only son of his family and had one younger sister, who is two years younger. He studied in the Institute of Technical Education in 1993 before he dropped out of school to support his parents, who both suffered from poor health, and sister, who was a student. His father, Muthusamy Kalimuthu, worked at the Public Utilities Board and suffered from both epilepsy and an unknown mental illness, requiring long-term treatment at the Institute of Mental Health. His mother Arumugam Angelay, suffered from hypertension and diabetes and worked as a junior officer at a production firm with a salary of S$1,100. Mathavakannan worked various jobs to support his family, including as a cleaner at a hotel for eight months, a paint scraper at a aerospace company for one-and-a-half years, and a labourer before his enlistment for National Service.Crime and capital punishment
Murder of Saravanan Michael Ramalingam
On 26 May 1996, 16 days after celebrating his 18th birthday, 18-year-old Mathavakannan, together with his two older friends and secret society gang members, 23-year-old odd-job worker Asogan Ramesh Ramachandren and 24-year-old unemployed Selvar Kumar Silvaras, assaulted and murdered 25-year-old Saravanan Michael Ramalingam, a secret society gangster from the Sio Ang Koon Secret Society and Lion Brothers. Before that, Saravanan and Asogan had had conflicts with each other on three previous occasions.According to court documents detailing the case, Mathavakannan had gone drinking with both Selvar and Asogan on the night of 25 May 1996. It was not until the early hours of 26 May 1996 that the trio decided to head home. On the way, the trio encountered Saravanan, who had been a schoolmate and friend of Selvar's at Anderson Secondary School before they fell out due to their rival gang allegiances. Seeing him, Selvar, then a member of the "Tiger Rose" gang, shouted at Saravanan, beckoning him over for a talk. In response, Saravanan allegedly shouted back some Tamil expletives and ran away.
The trio promptly gave chase, with Mathavakannan being the first to catch up with Saravanan at the void deck of Block 93, Whampoa Drive. Saravanan pulled out a knife and slashed Mathavakannan on the hand. As Mathavakannan and Saravanan fought, Asogan arrived and helped Mathavakannan overpower Saravanan. Mathavakannan then took the knife and stabbed Saravanan several times. Soon after, Selvar caught up with his two companions and swung a broken chair at Saravanan, fracturing his skull. Saravanan then died.
Capture and sentencing
After the murder, Mathavakannan was not arrested until 4 July 1996, when he was just beginning his two-year mandatory National Service. As for Asogan and Selvar, Asogan was arrested in a hotel in Singapore while Selvar gave himself up to the police. Within the next four months, all three were brought to trial before High Court judge Kan Ting Chiu in the High Court of Singapore for murder. As murder was a capital offence in Singapore, a guilty verdict would result in a mandatory death penalty.On 27 November 1996, six months after the murder of Saravanan, the three men were found guilty of murder and sentenced to death. As Mathavakannan was 16 days past his 18th birthday when he killed Saravanan, his conviction for Saravanan's murder meant that he was automatically sentenced to mandatory execution by hanging under Singapore law. Had Mathavakannan committed the crime more than two weeks earlier, he would have been spared the death sentence and instead would have served indefinite imprisonment at the President's Pleasure.
It was reported that when Justice Kan delivered his verdict, among the 40 people present to hear the sentence, a female relative of one of the three men reacted badly to the death sentence, and her family had to restrain her as she made an emotional scene in court.
Aftermath
Appeal
After their convictions by the High Court, Mathavakannan, Asogan and Selvar appealed against their sentences. However, nearly a year later, on 14 October 1997, the Court of Appeal of Singapore dismissed the appeals of all the three accused and upheld their death sentences.After losing their appeals against the death sentence, all three men petitioned to the President of Singapore Ong Teng Cheong for clemency on 13 January 1998. In his clemency petition, Mathavakannan expressed that he felt deep regret for causing the death of Saravanan on that night itself, and claimed that he did not want to fight the man or intend to kill the man when he caught up with Saravanan, who started the fight by inflicting the first blow on him, leading to Mathavakannan having to defend himself.
Mathavakannan's lawyer Subhas Anandan also wrote in the clemency letter and asked for mercy to the President on account of Mathavakannan's young age at the time of the murder, and that he played the most minor role out of all the three in the murder of Saravanan. Anandan's involvement in the clemency letter was referred to when he explained the presidential clemency process in Singapore during an interview in 2013. Mathavakannan was not explicitly referred to during the interview.
Not only that, Mathavakannan's mother also submitted a personal letter to President Ong pleading for mercy from the President. In the letter, Mathavakannan's mother said these words:
My son is my world, my life and the very essence of my existence... If the death sentence is carried out, it would also be my death sentence because the sorrow of the loss of my only son would surely kill me.
There were a total of five letters submitted on behalf of Mathavakannan to appeal for mercy from President Ong.
Clemency granted and commutation of sentence
On 28 April 1998, three months and two weeks after receiving Mathavakannan's clemency plea, President Ong decided to, on the advice of the Cabinet, accept Mathavakannan's submission and thus commuted 19-year-old Mathavakannan's death sentence to life imprisonment. The reasons behind Mathavakannan's successful clemency petition were not given.Extracted from President Ong's commutation order :
WHEREAS Mathavakannan K, having been tried at the High Court, Singapore, was on the 27 November 1996, in due form of law convicted of and sentenced to death for the commission of an offence of murder:
AND WHEREAS I have, upon the advice of the Cabinet, decided in the exercise of my prerogative
that the said sentence of death passed upon him be commuted to a sentence of life imprisonment:
NOW, THEREFORE, I, ONG TENG CHEONG, President of the Republic of Singapore, in exercise of the powers conferred on me by section 238 of the Criminal Procedure Code, do hereby commute the said sentence of death and order that the said Mathavakannan K be imprisoned for life.
GIVEN under my Hand and the Seal at the Istana, Singapore, this 28th day of April 1998.
At the time of his pardon from the gallows, Mathavakannan was the sixth person since 1965 to be granted clemency from the President of Singapore. There were five precedent cases of death row inmates who had successfully obtained clemency petitions from the President before him. This outcome was widely reported at that time as the successful cases of clemency were considered a rare phenomenon in Singapore, since there were many people who failed to receive pardon from the President of Singapore. This was the only clemency granted by President Ong during his term of presidency.
May 1998 executions of Asogan and Selvar
As for both Asogan and Selvar's clemency petitions, President Ong, who also received them besides Mathavakannan's, decided to reject both the clemency letters on the advice of the Cabinet. Soon after, two death warrants were issued for both Asogan and Selvar, who were scheduled to be hanged in Changi Prison at dawn on 29 May 1998, according to a 1998 Amnesty International Report.Amnesty International, upon hearing that both Asogan and Selvar will be executed, called upon Singapore to cancel the executions and to abolish the death penalty in Singapore. They also welcomed President Ong's decision to spare Mathavakannan's life and used this fact to urge the President to also extend his mercy to the other two accomplices and spare their lives as well. While they do concede that both Asogan and Selvar deserved to be punished for Saravanan's murder, they said that the death penalty violated the rights to live and was not an effective deterrent to crime.
Despite Amnesty International's plea for clemency, both Asogan and Selvar were hanged at dawn on 29 May 1998, as scheduled in their death warrants. They were executed together with an unnamed drug trafficker on the same day. The pair's obituaries were published a day after their executions in the national daily newspaper The Straits Times. The pair's hangings were also confirmed by Amnesty International in its 1998 execution report and 1999 annual human rights report. The 1999 human rights report also revealed that within the year 1998, there were at least a total of 28 executions reportedly carried out in Singapore and at least five death sentences being reportedly meted out by the courts of Singapore for murder or drug trafficking, but Amnesty International believed that the actual numbers could be higher.
The executions of both Asogan and Selvar took place just three days after 26 May 1998, the date of the murdered victim Saravanan's second death anniversary.