Vignes Mourthi

Vignes s/o Mourthi (21 March 1980 – 26 September 2003) was a Malaysian convicted drug trafficker who was found guilty of trafficking 27.65 grams of diamorphine on 20 September 2001.

Vignes Mourthi was a Malaysian born in the Malaysian state of Perak on 21 March 1980.

His father Vasu Mourthi made a living as a food seller.

Vignes and his kin moved to Johor Bahru in the late 1990s, and from that point, Vignes began travelling to Singapore to work, like many Malaysians before him who travelled to Singapore for better employment and higher income to provide better life.

He was working as a machine operator prior to his arrest.

Moorthy, who was married with two children and resided in Johor, told the court that he was not involved in the offence charged and only gave a ride to Vignes due to the latter's leg injury, as a repayment of Vignes's father's kindness to him back in 1998 when his then pregnant wife, mother and younger brother got into a car accident, and Vignes's father travelled from Perak to Seremban to ensure their welfare.

Moorthy stated he was unfortunately implicated by Vignes in his statements due to Vignes not wanting to shoulder the rap alone and wanted another person to share the blame with him.

He even claimed that he had an alibi and was at his sister's house celebrating his nephew's 7th birthday (which actually fell on 2 September) on the day he supposedly met Vignes and made the offer to Vignes to help deliver the drugs.

Clemency was last granted in April 1998, when Mathavakannan Kalimuthu, one of the three gang members who killed a rival gangster during a fight, was pardoned from execution by then President Ong Teng Cheong and later served 16 years under a life sentence before his release in 2012 on parole.

Mathavakannan's two accomplices were executed a month after Mathavakannan escaped the gallows.

Vignes had three sisters in his family, and he was married in April 2001.

He had no children.

On 20 September 2001, 21-year-old Vignes Mourthi was arrested for drug trafficking.

According to the official version of events by the Central Narcotics Bureau (CNB) and court documents, after the CNB received a tip-off by an informant about one of the members of a drug syndicate seeking to sell diamorphine to buyers in Singapore.

Vignes was approached by an undercover officer, Sergeant Rajkumar, who expressed his interest to buy a package of drugs and offered a payment of S$8,000.

At the scheduled location outside a mosque in Admiralty, Vignes was arrested after he passed the package to Sergeant Rajkumar.

After the interrogation of Vignes, it was uncovered that there was another accomplice named Moorthy Angappan, and a team of officers was sent to apprehend Moorthy outside a fruit shop at Woodlands.

In the package, the police discovered diamorphine which weighed a total amount of 27.65g, which was nearly twice the amount which mandated the death sentence under the laws of Singapore.

Both Vignes and Moorthy stood trial at the High Court the following year.

According to Vignes in his defence, although he did not deny delivering the package, he believed that the packages contained incense stones and insisted that he was doing Moorthy, his father's friend, a favour.

Mourthi said that five days before the crime, he met Moorthy at his family home and accepted the offer to deliver a package of incense stones to a man called Tahir in Singapore after knowing that Moorthy dabbled in the transportation business.

It happened that on the same day itself Vignes injured his leg due to a motorcycle accident outside the Woodlands Checkpoint, hence Moorthy gave him a ride.

Mourthi also stated that he had never seen heroin before and realised that the packages contained drugs only after he was arrested.

He denied telling the officers and interpreter in Tamil that the package contained "kallu" (meaning stone, which is the street name for diamorphine), but he insisted it contained "sambrani kallu", a type of Indian incense stone normally used in Indian temples.

After the end of his trial in August 2002, Vignes and his accomplice Moorthy a/l Angappan (also a Malaysian) were both sentenced to death since the death penalty was mandatory for the amount trafficked by the duo.

Despite the immense evidence against him, Vignes maintained his innocence and appealed many times to overturn his conviction and sentence.

In August 2002, after the end of the trial, Judicial Commissioner Tay Yong Kwang, the trial judge, determined in his verdict (published full on 20 October 2002) that Vignes was aware that he was carrying diamorphine based on his resistance he put up prior to the arrest and other evidence against him and it could not be incense stones as he claimed he believed to be.

The inconsistencies of Vignes's account with the officers' evidence also led to the judge accepting that there was no inaccuracy in recording his statements.

As for Moorthy, his alibi defence was contradicted by the numerous witness accounts of Vignes's family members who witnessed Moorthy at their family home during his visit, and it was more likely for Moorthy's family members to give evidence that were in his advantage when they were called to support Moorthy's alibi.

Also, it was credible that he indeed instigated Vignes to deliver the diamorphine.

As such, Vignes Mourthi and Moorthy Angappan were both found guilty of drug trafficking and sentenced to death.

Through his lawyers Subhas Anandan and Anand Nalachandran, Vignes filed an appeal against his conviction and sentence.

He once again reiterated his claims of innocence and sought an acquittal.

Ultimately, Vignes was put to death alongside Moorthy as scheduled on 26 September 2003.

His execution remained a controversy even in the aftermath due to his insistent claims of innocence.

However, on 20 January 2003, the Court of Appeal's three judges - Chao Hick Tin, Judith Prakash and the Chief Justice Yong Pung How - agreed with the trial judge Tay Yong Kwang's findings that Vignes indeed knew that he carried diamorphine and was not truthful in his statements about delivering incense stones to Tahir.

Hence, they rejected his appeal.

Similarly, Moorthy also filed an appeal under the representation of his lawyer Michael Chia, but his alibi defence was also rejected by the three judges who dismissed his appeal on the same day as Vignes.

Subsequently, Vignes petitioned for clemency from then President of Singapore S. R. Nathan, which would allow Vignes's sentence be commuted to life imprisonment if successful.

However, in early September 2003, President Nathan rejected the 23-year-old Malaysian's death row plea for clemency, hereby finalizing Vignes's death sentence.