The woman who joined her daughter in the fatal abuse of their domestic helper from Myanmar will now spend three more years in jail.
64-year-old Prema S Naraynasamy had asked her son-in-law, a police officer, to remove the CCTV recorder containing footage of the abuse.
As such, the court recently extended Prema’s jail sentence.
This is on top of her current sentence of 14 years for her part in the assault.
Prema and her daughter Gaiyathiri Murugayan abused their helper, 24-year-old Piang Ngaih Don, for 14 months. The ill-treatment culminated in Ms Piang’s death from blunt force trauma to her neck on 16 Jul 2016.
As a result of being repeatedly punched, stomped on, and starved, Ms Piang was only 24kg when she passed.
They even tied her to a window grille at night after they found out she had tried to rummage for food from the bin.
On the night of Ms Piang’s death, Gaiyathiri hit Ms Piang with a detergent bottle. She felt that the helper was too slow while doing the laundry.
After Ms Piang fell back, Gayathri and Prema splashed water on her, hit her repeatedly, and tied her to the window. They left her there in her wet clothes, and Ms Piang never woke up.
According to Channel NewsAsia (CNA), Prema told her son-in-law Kevin Chelvam, a police officer, to dispose of the CCTV recorder when she learnt that authorities were on their way.
At first, Chelvam was reluctant to do so. However, he caved at his mother-in-law’s insistence.
Source: Joe Gadd on Unsplash, for illustration purposes only
When police arrived at the house, Prema slipped the device into her daughter-in-law’s bag. She told the daughter-in-law, who is not named, in Tamil to “do something with it”.
Although the daughter-in-law had passed the device to a friend, the police eventually managed to track it down.
For her attempt to cause the disappearance of the evidence, Prema was sentenced to three more years in jail.
While the judge noted that Prema would be in her 70s when her sentence ends, the long sentence is appropriate, considering her and her daughter’s crimes and their attempt at destroying the evidence.
Recently, Gayathiri tried appealing the 30-year jail term she was handed in 2021. However, the court rejected her application.
Chelvam, who has been suspended from the police force since August 2016, will face trial in July for his involvement in this case.
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Featured image adapted from TODAY on Facebook and Helping Hands for Migrant Workers, Singapore on Facebook.
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