Sujay Solomon Sutherson

Sujay Solomon Sutherson (c. 1981 – 8 September 2022) was a Singaporean prisoner who was convicted of the manslaughter of his mother Mallika Jesudasan in 2012.

Sujay, who was born in India but emigrated in Singapore at age 15, was charged with murdering his mother, after he was arrested for using three knives to slit his mother's throat before attempting to decapitate her, and disposed of her body in a suitcase.

Sujay was found to be suffering from paranoid schizophrenia and it severely impaired his mental responsibility at the time of the murder, which allowed Sujay's murder charge to be reduced to manslaughter on the grounds of diminished responsibility.

His father was an affluent businessman based in Chennai, Tamil Nadu, while his mother Mallika Jesudasan was an ethnic Indian-Singaporean who hailed from Singapore; his parents married through the arrangement of Sujay's maternal grandparents in 1979, and his mother settled in India with her husband.

Sujay Solomon Sutherson, the eldest of three children, was born in India in 1981.

Mallika's mother died in 1981 while Mallika's father, who remarried to a divorcee with three children, died in 2001.

By the mid-1990s, the business of Sujay's father floundered, and due to this, Sujay's mother Mallika decided to move back to Singapore for better job prospects, and for the sake of providing her children better education, Sujay and his two younger siblings (a brother and sister) were brought back to Singapore by their mother; Sujay was 14 or 15 years old at the time when he first set foot into his mother's birth country, and he obtained Singapore citizenship sometime after emigrating there.

Sujay, his siblings and mother were taken in by Mallika's younger sister Leela, and in addition to a domestic helper and Leela's elder son, the seven of them lived together in a four-room flat in Bukit Batok, and Mallika became a church secretary.

Sujay's parents divorced barely two years after Mallika and their children moved back to Singapore.

According to his family, Sujay's behaviour began to change in 2005, and eventually, at age 26, Sujay was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia, and although his family tried their best to help him and take care of him, it was reportedly a challenge as Sujay did not adhere to his medication and did not accept that he was mentally ill.

Based on hospital records, in May 2006, Sujay was first hospitalized at the Institute of Mental Health (IMH) for 11 days after he was arrested for waving knives at his uncle, and was prescribed with antipsychotic medication.

Initially, after his discharge, Sujay regularly attended his follow-up sessions, but he began to default on them in October 2006.

Sujay was once again taken by his family members to the IMH in June 2007, after they reported that he had behaved in a hostile manner towards them, and he was hospitalized for about a month.

Sujay went for follow-up check-ups in the next three years and six months, but he once again skipped his treatment thereafter.

In February 2011, Sujay's mother and uncle observed that he had a relapse, but Sujay refused to accept treatment or even antipsychotic injections.

In the following months, Sujay's family found that Sujay's condition had deteriorated and that they suspected that he had not been taking his medication regularly.

At the time of her death in 2012, Mallika worked as a public relations coordinator.

Sujay, who was eloquent and had a love for cricket, reportedly struggled in his late teens, but he eventually completed his university studies and graduated with an arts degree from the National University of Singapore (NUS).

On 27 May 2012, at their flat in Bukit Batok, 31-year-old Sujay Solomon Sutherson murdered his 56-year-old mother Mallika Jesudasan.

After a five-day trial in 2015, Sujay was found guilty of manslaughter and sentenced to life imprisonment.

On 8 September 2022, seven years after he was sentenced, Sujay died at the age of 41 due to septicemia while serving his sentence at Changi Prison.

Sheena (aged 31 in 2015), Sujay's sister, last seen her mother alive at 6.30pm when she left the flat to meet a friend, and at that point of time, Mallika was left alone at home with her elder son Sujay.

According to Sujay, Mallika asked him for money after they had their dinner on that fateful day, but he turned down her request and proceeded to the kitchen to wash his plate.

Sujay said that when he did so, Mallika grabbed his hair and scratched him, and allegedly, Mallika tried to undress her son, wanting to get intimate with him, and this caused Sujay to react by picking up a knife with a blue handle from the kitchen counter and plunged the knife into Mallika's neck.

Afterwards, with the knife still embedded in her neck, Mallika staggered back towards her bedroom and tried to reach for the phone.

Sujay, who took a second knife from the kitchen and caught up with Mallika, and stabbed his mother in her throat in order to stop her from using the phone.

The second stabbing causing her to collapse, but despite being mortally wounded, Mallika writhed on the floor for some time and spoke unintelligibly.

Seeing this, Sujay once again headed to the kitchen to retrieve a silver butterfly knife and in Sujay's own words, he did not want to get "attacked again", and so he used the third knife to slit his mother's throat.

As a result of her wounds, 56-year-old Mallika Jesudasan died on the spot.

After staring at her body for a period of time, Sujay decided to dispose of the body.

He first wrapped Mallika in bedsheets and blankets, covered her with some old newspapers and poured alcohol from a vodka bottle and a bottle of rice wine, and used a stove lighter to set fire on his mother's corpse.

However, it failed as the fire only could burn parts of Mallika's clothing before it died out.

Undeterred by his failure, Sujay wrapped the body up in more bedsheets and blankets before he dragged the body from his mother's bedroom to his own bedroom.

He finally hid the body under his bed after he re-arranged the some of the items beneath the bed.

Sujay mopped the floor in order to clear away the bloodstains from the flat.

While he was in the midst of cleaning, his younger brother Sunil returned home and found the door locked from the inside.

Although Sujay pacified his brother by stating that he would open the door once he finished cleaning the house, Sunil found it strange as Sujay never did any house-cleaning.

After a few minutes, Sujay allowed his brother into the flat, and it was then dawned upon Sunil that his mother was missing, without knowing that his brother had killed their mother hours earlier.

After failing to reach his mother by phone, Sunil contacted his sister and uncle and sought their help to look for Mallika, and according to Sujay's uncle, when he reached the flat, he noticed that his sister's bedroom floor was wet, and he also saw pieces of burnt fabric and paper in the kitchen.

Despite his suspicions, Sujay's uncle and his sister's two younger children walked around the neighbourhood to search for Mallika, they were still unable to locate Mallika.