Datchinamurthy Kataiah

Datchinamurthy a/l Kataiah (born 30 December 1985) is a Malaysian man who was sentenced to death in Singapore for drug trafficking.

Born on 30 December 1985 in Malaysia, Datchinamurthy Kataiah was the only son of his parents.

He grew up together with his three sisters at Johor Bahru.

His family was poor during his early life, and Datchinamurthy, who had a cheerful and gentle personality, was close to his family.

Despite his poverty, he was kind and helped those in need.

After he finished his secondary school education at age 17 and reached his adult years, Datchinamurthy eventually became engaged to a woman.

Their first child was born sometime after Datchinamurthy was arrested for drug trafficking in Singapore.

It was revealed in 2022 that Datchinamurthy's father died a year after his son was arrested for drug offences, and he never got to see his son one last time at his deathbed; Datchinamurthy was also denied leave to go attend the funeral, where the son must be present at a parent's burial according to Hindu traditions.

Should he succeeded in receiving the pardon, Datchinamurthy would become the first person to escape the gallows after the 1998 clemency pardon of Mathavakannan Kalimuthu, who was, at age 19, guilty of murdering a gangster in 1996.

Datchinamurthy was convicted of trafficking nearly 45g of heroin across the Woodlands Checkpoint from Malaysia to Singapore in January 2011.

On 18 January 2011, Datchinamurthy, together with a Singaporean accomplice Christeen Jayamany, were arrested at the Woodlands Checkpoint by the Singapore authorities for allegedly trafficking over 44.96g of heroin across the border of Singapore from Malaysia.

As the amount of trafficked heroin exceeds the legal minimum of 15g, Datchinamurthy and Christeen were both charged with capital drug trafficking, which warrants the mandatory death penalty in Singapore if found guilty.

They were later both tried in the High Court of Singapore for the alleged offences.

According to both the defendants' accounts, prior to their capture, Chirsteen, who was facing financial difficulties and needed money to take care of her children, was hired by Datchinamurthy through connections and introductions to other people.

She was asked to deliver something by Datchinamurthy, who provided her a bag which she should pass to another person, and Datchinamurthy stated he will pay her $200 once the job is done.

Christeen also stated she did not know that the bag contained packages of drugs.

Likewise, Datchinamurthy denied that he had any knowledge of the drugs.

He stated he was offered a job by a friend named "Rajah", who wanted to pay him to deliver some drugs, which Rajah assured him were "not serious" and Datchinamurthy thus believed he was delivering traditional Chinese medicine after checking the bags himself and thus did not suspect anything; the drugs, according to him, looked brown and did not look white (which was the normal appearance of heroin).

Datchinamurthy was also in charge of relaying messages between Rajah and Christeen.

Hence, both accused persons sought to downplay their conduct and paint themselves as couriers, through their defence lawyers, to escape the death penalty.

Under the law, should a drug convict was merely acting as courier or suffering from diminished responsibility, he or she will only be eligible for life imprisonment but not death.

Mathavakannan was paroled and released in 2012 after serving 16 years out of his life sentence due to good behaviour.

Datchinamurthy's family and his fiancée gathered to plead for clemency from the Singapore government on his life, and they stated there was no fair trial for Datchinamurthy, since he was allegedly being subjected to different treatment from Christeen, who was given a life sentence instead of death, unlike Datchinamurthy.

Having been convicted of the crime and also not certified as a courier, Datchinamurthy was sentenced to death in 2015.

He had a co-accused, Christeen d/o Jayamany, who was sentenced to life imprisonment for the same offence.

On 8 May 2015, the trial judge Tay Yong Kwang determined that both Christeen and Datchinamurthy were guilty as charged, as he found both of them aware of the existence of heroin and hence failed to rebut the presumption of knowledge.

Justice Tay found that in Datchinamurthy's case, he was not acting as a simple drug runner, as he was promised rich payment around hundreds of dollars (in both SGD and Malaysian Ringgit) by his alleged boss Rajah, and he had also took the role of hiring Christeen in helping him to deliver the drugs.

It was impossible for him to have huge trust on Rajah, with whom he had a short encounter, and he also demonstrated his huge suspicion that he was carrying illegal drugs, which should have been reflected from the way of operations and delivery.

Hence, Datchinamurthy failed to prove himself as a courier and hence, he was sentenced to death by hanging.

Christeen, who was certified as a courier and had given substantive assistance to the authorities in tackling drug offences, was spared the gallows and she was therefore sentenced to life imprisonment, with effect from the date of her arrest.

Christeen also did not receive caning since she was a female.

Datchinamurthy later filed an appeal against his sentence.

After Datchinamurthy lost his appeal in January 2016, he tried to appeal to the President of Singapore for clemency to commute his sentence to life imprisonment.

The clemency process took three years before it finally concluded and it was decided that Datchinamurthy should be executed and thus clemency was denied.

Originally scheduled on 29 April 2022, his execution is currently suspended due to ongoing appeals he filed in relation to his case.

However, the Court of Appeal of Singapore dismissed his appeal on 5 February 2016, as the three judges - Chao Hick Tin, Andrew Phang and Kan Ting Chiu - determined that Datchinamurthy had failed to rebut the legal presumption of him carrying the illegal drugs and the totality of evidence had suggested no error in convicting Datchinamurthy of his original drug trafficking charge.

Datchinamurthy subsequently submitted an appeal for clemency to the President of Singapore, hoping that his death sentence can be commuted to life imprisonment.

In July 2019, Datchinamurthy's clemency appeal was dismissed by President Halimah Yacob, on the advice of the Cabinet.

Three other Malaysian convicts on death row - Gobi Avedian, Abdul Helmi Ab Halim and Rahmat Karimon - also lost their clemency pleas at around the same time Datchinamurthy failed to receive his pardon, along with nine other prisoners.

There were international fears that this phenomenon might signal a rise in executions of drug traffickers in Singapore, and some Malaysian lawyers also claimed that Singapore had intentionally targeted Malaysian death row convicts, which the Singapore government refuted in return.