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SINGAPORE – Chilling footage of an emaciated domestic worker being grabbed by her hair and shaken like a rag doll was played in court on Tuesday (February 23).
His Singaporean employer, the wife of a police officer, admitted that he had starved, tortured, and eventually killed his 24-year-old aide from Myanmar.
Prosecutors are seeking life in prison for Gaiyathiri Murugayan, 40, after he pleaded guilty to 28 counts, the most serious of which is manslaughter.
For almost ten months, the domestic worker, Ms. Piang Ngaih Don, was physically assaulted almost daily, deprived of food and rest, and forced to shower and relieve herself with the bathroom door open.
For the last 12 days of her life, she was tied to the window grill at night while sleeping on the floor.
The Myanmar citizen weighed 24 kg when she died on July 26, 2016, from the final assault, having lost 38% of her body weight since she started working for the family on May 28, 2015.
The ordeal she endured in the last month of her life was captured by CCTV cameras that Gaiyathiri and her husband, Kevin Chelvam, 41, had installed in various parts of their Bishan apartment to monitor the maid and her two sons.
In one incident, the couple’s one-year-old son could be seen walking while his mother assaulted the maid.
Gaiyathiri’s mother, Prema S. Naraynasamy, 61, who often stayed in the apartment, was also seen in the pictures.
Both Prema and Chelvam face multiple charges related to injuries in relation to the victim. Their cases are pending in state courts.
The defense is seeking a global jail sentence of 14 years for Gaiyathiri, noting that she developed major depressive disorder while pregnant with her son, and this amplified her obsessive compulsive personality disorder.
But prosecutors argued that her psychiatric condition had already been taken into account when the charge related to Ms. Piang’s death was reduced from murder to wrongful death.
Judge See Kee Oon will render his decision on sentencing at a later date.
The court heard that Ms. Piang, who had a three-year-old son, was working outside Myanmar for the first time and was not allowed to have a mobile phone or take any days off.
Gaiyathiri was not happy with her performance and felt that she was slow, had poor hygiene practices and ate too much.
She established a set of rules that involved hygiene and order, and yelled when she felt that Ms. Piang was being disobedient. This turned into physical abuse in October 2015.
CCTV footage showed Gaiyathiri pouring cold water on Ms. Piang, slapping, pushing, hitting, kicking and stepping on her while she was on the ground.
He also hit Ms. Piang with objects such as a plastic bottle or metal ladle, pulled her out of the ground by her hair, burned her with a hot iron, and strangled her.
The maid’s meals often consisted of water-soaked bread slices, cold food straight from the refrigerator, or some evening rice.
She was allowed to sleep for only about five hours a night and did her chores wearing multiple layers of face masks as Gaiyathiri found her unsanitary.
Between 11:40 PM and 11:55 PM on July 25, Gaiyathiri assaulted Ms. Piang for being too slow to wash clothes.
Gaiyathiri and Prema took turns pouring water on her and assaulted her together, leaving her tied to the window grille without supper.
Between 4.55 and 5 in the morning, Gaiyathiri repeatedly kicked and stomped on Ms. Piang’s head and neck area repeatedly, grabbing her by the hair and pulling her head back so that her neck was extended back twice and strangle her repeatedly.
At 7.30 in the morning, they found Ms. Piang immobile and Chelvam went to work.
After failing to revive her, Prema suggested they call a doctor.
Gaiyathiri called a nearby clinic between 9:30 am and 9:45 am and requested a home visit, lying to the nurse who found the victim on the kitchen floor.
Dr. Grace Kwan, through the nurse, suggested calling an ambulance, but Gaiyathiri insisted on waiting for the doctor.
While they waited, the two women removed Ms. Piang’s wet clothes and carried her to the living room sofa.
When Dr. Kwan arrived around 10.50am. M., told the two women that the maid was dead, but they expressed shock and lied saying she had moved in a few minutes earlier.
Dr. Kwan insisted that the police be called, but Gaiyathiri asked for a time to call her husband.
When the doctor asked Gaiyathiri if he had beaten the victim, she denied doing so.
After a few minutes, Dr. Kwan called an ambulance.
Paramedics arrived around 11:30 am and declared Ms. Piang dead.
An autopsy report found a total of 31 recent scars and 47 external injuries throughout the maid’s body.
It found that the victim’s repeated suffocation on July 25 had caused the brain to lack oxygen, resulting in death.
This article was first published in The times of the strait.
