Selvaraju s/o Satippan v Public Prosecutor

• Jurisdiction: Singapore
• Judge: Chao Hick Tin JA
• Judgment Date: 10 November 2004
• Neutral Citation: [2004] SGCA 53
• Docket Number: Criminal Appeal No 12 of 2004
• Date: 10 November 2004
• Published date: 24 November 2004
• Year: 2004
• Plaintiff Counsel: Appellant in person
• Citation: [2004] SGCA 53
• Defendant Counsel: Seah Kim Ming Glenn (Deputy Public Prosecutor)
• Court: Court of Appeal (Singapore)
• Subject Matter: Whether amounting to demand for ransom,Attempted murder,Statutory offences,Offences,Whether act still falling within ambit of Kidnapping Act,Whether acts of accused constituting wrongful confinement,Section 307(1) Penal Code (Cap 224, 1985 Rev Ed),Section 436 Penal Code (Cap 224, 1985 Rev Ed),Section 3 Kidnapping Act (Cap 151, 1999 Rev Ed),Hurt,Criminal Law,Section 324 Penal Code (Cap 224, 1985 Rev Ed),Demand for moneys kidnapper believed owing to him,Mischief,Kidnapping Act,Voluntarily causing hurt,Location of kidnap victim and kidnapper and identity of kidnapper known,Property,Mischief by fire

10 November 2004

Lai Kew Chai J (delivering the judgment of the court):

1 The appellant was convicted by Tay Yong Kwang J on four charges arising from the events of 7 August 2003 at the home of the Varghese family at 1 Cotswold Close. We dismissed his appeals against conviction and sentence, and set out our reasons below.

The facts

2 On the fateful day at about 9.45am, Madanahalu Gedara Subadrawathie, the Varghese family’s maid (“the maid”), heard the doorbell ring. She saw the appellant standing outside the gates of the house. When she asked him for his name and the purpose of his visit, he refused to identify himself but said that he wanted to talk to her boss and also wanted some money. The maid told the appellant she would have to call her boss’s wife, as her boss was not at home and she did not have his telephone number. The appellant insisted on speaking with her boss. He asked her to open the gates but she refused.

3 The maid started walking back towards the house. She turned and saw the appellant climbing over the fence. He subdued her and warned her not to shout or he would kill her. There was some dispute at the trial as to whether the appellant had used a small foldable knife in subduing the maid. The two persons entered the kitchen with the appellant holding on to the maid’s neck tightly. He took a kitchen knife and threatened to kill her if she made any noise. He asked her to get valuables from the master bedroom, but she claimed that there were none. He then asked her to close the curtains in the house. The appellant wanted to tie the maid up with some telephone wire, but she persuaded him to let her call her boss’s wife and get her to bring money home. However, he soon changed his mind and stopped her from making the call.

4 Just at that moment, Nina Elizabeth Varghese (“Nina”), the daughter of the Varghese family, rang the doorbell. The appellant told the maid to let Nina in, before pulling her into the bathroom attached to Nina’s bedroom. When Nina entered her bedroom talking on her mobile phone, the appellant pushed her against a wall and told her not to shout. Nina felt something sharp pressed against the right side of her neck. After some commotion, Nina asked the appellant what he wanted. He demanded $150,000 and threatened to kill her if his demand was not met. He told Nina to call her mother, Susheela Varghese (“Susheela”), to bring the money home and not to call the police. Nina asked if she could call her father, Roy Abraham Varghese (“Roy”), instead, but the appellant refused her request without giving a reason. Nina called Susheela, who in turn called Roy. The appellant subsequently repeated his demand and threat to Susheela over the telephone. Roy called the police.

5 The appellant tied Nina’s wrists up using a length of computer speaker wire he had cut. Seeing that the appellant was becoming agitated, Nina struck up a conversation with him. He claimed that he intended to leave Singapore with the money. If he could not get the money, he would kill Nina and then commit suicide. Nina managed to negotiate with the appellant to lower the amount he demanded to $50,000.

6 The appellant noticed some movement outside the bathroom windows and asked the maid to open one of the windows. Roy was standing outside. The appellant and Nina stood at the entrance of the bathroom with the appellant pointing the knife at Nina’s neck. Addressing the appellant as “Sir”, Roy asked the appellant how he could help. The appellant repeated his demand that he be paid $150,000 or else he would kill Nina and commit suicide. The appellant, when asked by Roy, claimed to know Roy. Roy replied that he did not know the appellant. Roy also said he could only raise $50,000, and the appellant agreed to lower his demand to that amount. Roy left and informed some police officers outside the compound about what had transpired.

7 Roy returned to negotiate further with the appellant, saying that he was having difficulty raising the money. The appellant asked Roy for the small amount of money in Roy’s wallet but soon returned it. Suddenly, the appellant noticed an Indian plainclothes police officer who had followed Roy into the compound and was crouching next to Roy. Roy lied that the police officer was his neighbour, and Nina played along. The appellant told Roy and the police officer to leave. Nina tried to convince the appellant about what Roy had said, but the appellant was not convinced, saying that he knew the neighbourhood well and the Vargheses did not have any Indian neighbours. He also said he had planned to go to the Varghese home about one and a half years ago.

8 The appellant grew impatient and broke off communications with the police negotiator and Roy, but not before telling Roy that his daughter was going to die that day. He instructed the maid to gather Nina’s clothes, which were strewn about the bedroom, into a pile. He took out a lighter and said he was going to burn the house down. He then dragged a bookshelf to block the bedroom door and left the doors of the wardrobe open.

9 The maid asked to be allowed to call Roy to hurry up with the money. The appellant initially acceded to the maid’s request but then changed his mind. He then told the maid he would let her go and that she was to go and tell Roy to bring the money or he would kill Nina. Nina suggested that she write a note to that effect for the maid to hand over to Roy instead, as the maid had a poor command of English. The appellant agreed and told Nina what to write, but Nina actually wrote to tell her father that the appellant could see what was happening outside and was becoming desperate. The appellant could not read the note himself as he appeared to be short-sighted. Nina offered to read the note back to him, and repeated what he had dictated to her as if she had obeyed him. The appellant then helped the maid leave the house through the bathroom windows.

10 After the maid had left the house, the appellant, claiming to see policemen outside, set fire to the clothes in the wardrobe with the lighter. The fire spread quickly and there was a lot of black smoke, but the appellant refused Nina’s request to open the bedroom windows. As the appellant and Nina moved towards the bathroom, he suddenly grabbed Nina’s hands, raised the knife he was holding and brought it down on her left forearm while grunting loudly. He then cut his own wrists and neck, before going into the bathroom and closing the door.

11 Nina rushed towards the bedroom door and tried to pull aside the bookshelf blocking the door. The sound of her efforts brought the appellant out of the bathroom with knife in hand. Nina ducked down and tried unsuccessfully to crawl through the gap in the doorway. While she was in a squatting position, the appellant came up behind her with the knife raised above his head and aimed at her skull. Nina managed to dodge him before he could strike, ran into the bathroom, pushed open the window, stood on the toilet seat and dived headlong through the window grilles. The appellant left the bedroom and entered the hall, where he cut his wrists and neck intermittently before being arrested.

The trial

12 The Prosecution proceeded on the following four charges at the trial:

(a) committing mischief by fire, punishable under s 436 of the Penal Code (Cap 224, 1985 Rev Ed) (“the first charge”);

(b) wrongfully confining Nina with intent to hold her for ransom, punishable under s 3 of the Kidnapping Act (Cap 151, 1999 Rev Ed) (“the second charge”);

(c) voluntarily causing hurt to Nina, punishable under s 324 of the Penal Code (“the third charge”); and

(d) attempting to murder Nina, punishable under s 307(1) of the Penal Code (“the ninth charge”).

Another five charges were withdrawn, and the appellant was given a discharge amounting to an acquittal in respect of these charges.

13 Apart from the issue of whether the appellant had with him the small foldable knife when he first entered the compound, the Defence did not dispute many of the facts in the Prosecution’s case. In respect of the first charge, the appellant testified that he was angry as he felt cheated by Roy, but did not have the intention to set fire to the house and burn it down. On the third charge, he denied causing hurt to Nina, and suggested that Nina’s injury had been caused accidentally. On the ninth charge, he denied attempting to murder Nina, saying that he could have done so earlier. Given the confined space and his bigger build, he would have succeeded in killing her in the way she described.

14 On the second charge, the appellant said that he was merely asking for the return of money Roy owed him. He alleged that he first got to know Roy, who worked as a financial adviser representative with a financial planning company, in 1997 or 1998. He was then operating a food stall at the canteen of the old Tan Tock Seng Hospital. He invested $50,000 at Roy’s invitation in the property business of Roy’s father-in-law in November 1998 (“the investment agreement”). For his investment, he was supposed to receive a monthly return of $5,000 regardless of how the business fared. He would also get back his capital when the investment agreement was terminated. However, he did not know where Roy’s calling card, which had Roy’s home address and telephone number on it, had gone. He also had no written proof of the investment agreement and of the money supposedly given to Roy. The appellant claimed that he had received about $60,000 in total from Roy up to the end of 2000. In 2001, Roy stopped paying the appellant because of financial difficulties, but promised to settle all outstanding amounts owed to the appellant after his father-in-law had sold his house. The appellant waited for about a year with no news from Roy, and then made several unsuccessful demands for payment. In the face of his mounting financial and legal difficulties, the appellant went to the Varghese home on 7 August 2003 to ask...