10 April 2025 :

The Malaysian High Court on April 10, 2025 imposed the death penalty on two Pakistani nationals after they were found guilty of trafficking 191.28 kg of ketamine six years ago.
Judge Datuk Azhar Abdul Hamid meted out the sentence on Abdul Wahab, 60, and Muhammad Rafiq, 52, after determining that the defence had failed to raise a reasonable doubt at the end of their case.
“The sentence is death by hanging,” said the judge.
During today’s proceedings, deputy public prosecutors from the Royal Malaysian Customs Department, Putrajaya, Syazwani Zawawi and Muhammad Amin Azmi, appeared for the prosecution, while the two accused were represented by lawyers A. Venkateswari and A. Rajee.
A total of 19 prosecution witnesses and six defence witnesses, including the two accused, testified during the trial, which commenced in 2020.
On the first and second charges, the men were jointly accused of trafficking 126.502 kg and 63.79 kg of ketamine, respectively, at two premises located in Jalan Munshi Abdullah, Dang Wangi, and Taman Teluk Gedung Indah, Klang, between 4.30 pm and 10.30 pm on March 25, 2019.
They were charged under Section 39B(1)(a) of the Dangerous Drugs Act 1952, which mandates the death penalty.
Abdul Wahab faced an additional count of trafficking 987.6 gm of ketamine at the same location, date, and time, under the same section.

31 March 2025 :

Malaysia’s Court of Appeal has commuted the death sentences of five Indian nationals to 30 years in prison, finding them guilty on two counts of drug trafficking at a plantation in Rantau, Negeri Sembilan, seven years ago, Free Malaysia Today reported on March 20, 2025.
A three-member bench, chaired by Justice Ahmad Zaidi Ibrahim, said there was no merit in the appeal by Radhakrishnan Syam, Fazril Farook, Sainulabdeen Siyad, Abdul Kalam Sajeev and Salim Sabeer against their High Court conviction in 2023.
Zaidi, who sat with Justices Azman Abdullah and Noorin Badaruddin, however, allowed the death penalty to be substituted with a jail term beginning from Aug 3, 2018.
They were sentenced to 30 years’ jail and ordered to be given 12 strokes of the rotan on each count.
The two jail terms will run concurrently, meaning that they will serve 30 years. In addition, they will be whipped 24 times, the maximum allowed under the law.
The five were charged under Section 39B(1) of the Dangerous Drugs Act 1952 for committing a preparatory act for trafficking dangerous drugs.
Two charges were framed against them as they were also found with about 1.5kg of methamphetamine and 2.7kg of ketamine.
According to the facts of the case, the five men were arrested in connection with a suspected illegal methamphetamine laboratory located deep in an oil palm plantation near Rantau town at about 6.30pm on Aug 3, 2018.
A police raid was first conducted on Aug 3 at a Hindu temple, where Radhakrishnan was arrested with another person while filling a container on a pick-up truck with water.
They led a police party to the plantation, where they arrested four others in a fenced-up area used as a laboratory to manufacture drugs.
Apparatus such as a weighing scale, a plastic bag sealer, heating devices and plastic and glass containers of various descriptions were also found.
A subsequent police investigation found that the land where the activities took place belonged to a resident who leased it to another person.
Deputy public prosecutor Noorhisham Jaafar appeared for the prosecution, while lawyer Sharonpal Singh represented the five accused.

13 January 2025 :

A former lorry driver who murdered an 85-year-old woman after raping and sodomising her in 2019 has his death sentence commuted to 40 years in prison by the Federal Court on January 13, 2025.
A three-judge panel consisting of Justices Datuk Harmindar Singh Dhaliwal, Datuk Nordin Hassan and Datuk Abu Bakar Jais, dismissed K. Sathiaraj’s appeal to overturn his murder conviction.
However, they allowed his appeal to commute the death sentence to a 40-year prison term, to be served from the date of arrest, which was Oct 9, 2019.
Justice Harmindar, who chaired the panel, also ordered Sathiaraj, 32, to be given 12 strokes of the cane.
In Aug 2022, Sathiaraj was found guilty and sentenced to death by the High Court for killing the woman in a flat in Kampung Tasik Tambahan, Ampang, Selangor between 11.40 am and 1 pm on Sept 19, 2019.
Prior to that, Sathiaraj had pleaded guilty to raping and sodomising the woman and was sentenced to 13 years in jail and five lashes of the cane by the Ampang Sessions Court. He did not appeal against this court’s decision.
His appeal against his murder conviction and death sentence was dismissed by the Court of Appeal in February last year.
In today’s proceeding at the Federal Court, Sathiaraj’s lawyer, Anwar Ezzad Zainal, requested the court to commute his client’s death sentence to a 31-prison term, in line with the Abolition of Mandatory Death Penalty Act 2023.
However, deputy public prosecutor How May Ling argued for the death penalty to be maintained, describing Sathiaraj’s acts as horror, cruel, diabolical and most exceptional case.
She detailed how Sathiaraj had pretended to ask for water from the elderly woman, then followed her into her home and locked the doors behind her.
She said Sathiaraj proceeded to stuff the woman’s mouth with layers of cloth, wrapped her head tightly with clothing to suffocate her, and then tied her hands behind her back before raping and sodomising her without any mercy and leaving her to die.

18 March 2025 :

The Federal Court on March 14, 2025 reinstated the death penalty for a former lorry driver convicted of murdering his wife and seven-month-old daughter in 2016.
Notably, the decision coincided with Satvender Singh’s 39th birthday.
A three-judge panel comprising Justices Datuk Rhodzariah Bujang, Datuk Abu Bakar Jais, and Datuk Abdul Karim Abdul Jalil allowed the prosecution’s appeal to reinstate the High Court’s initial conviction and sentence.
Justice Rhodzariah, delivering the unanimous decision, stated that the death penalty was the appropriate sentence given the gravity of the crime.
She further noted that the case was supported by clear and irrefutable circumstantial evidence, which pointed to Satvender as the perpetrator.
“He was the last person seen with the victims, as confirmed by the testimonies of his immediate neighbours,” she said.
Justice Rhodzariah said the Federal Court concurred with the High Court’s findings that Satvender had staged the crime scene to justify the killings.
She noted that both victims died of asphyxia and were found close to each other. The evidence strongly suggested that a pillow had been used to smother the infant while she was drinking milk.
In August 2021, the Shah Alam High Court sentenced Satvender to death after finding him guilty of murdering his wife, D Kamaljit, 34, and their infant daughter, Ishilyn Kaur Sandhu, at a double-storey terrace house in Taman Rawang Perdana 2, Rawang, between 3.55 am and 4.15 am on April 14, 2016.
However, in November last year, the Court of Appeal overturned his conviction and death sentence for his wife’s murder, reducing it to culpable homicide not amounting to murder and imposed a 20-year prison sentence.
The appellate court also acquitted and discharged him of his daughter’s murder.
The prosecution appealed this decision to the Federal Court, while Satvender filed a cross-appeal seeking acquittal on the manslaughter charge. However, his appeal was dismissed on March 14.
Satvender’s lawyer, Rajpal Singh, requested the court to commute the death sentence to a prison term, citing the recent Abolition of Mandatory Death Penalty Act 2023.
He submitted that his client was a first-time offender and had already served eight years in prison, adding that today was also Satvender’s birthday.
Deputy public prosecutor Noorhisham Mohd Jaafar urged the court to uphold the death sentence, emphasising that Kamaljit had been strangled, while the infant had died from asphyxia.
He contended that the crime was premeditated, with Satvender staging the crime scene to conceal his actions and mislead the police investigation.
Noorhisham further highlighted that Satvender had subjected Kamaljit to prolonged physical and psychological abuse before her death.

07 April 2025 :

Within two years year of the Prime Minister Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim administration abolishing the mandatory death penalty, the number of death row inmates has plunged by nearly 90 per cent, the clearest sign yet that Malaysia is moving away from capital punishment — even as it remains legal.
Data presented in Parliament during the February-March sitting this year showed a sharp increase in commutations of existing death sentences in the six months after Putrajaya repealed the mandatory death penalty.
This comes as death row inmates filed appeals for resentencing and judges granted them.
Most sentences were commuted to prison terms of between 20 and 40 years, with the latter often reserved for serious crimes such as murder.
In January 2024, there were 1,275 death row inmates, with 936 awaiting their resentencing applications. By January 1 this year, the total number of death row inmates had dropped to just 140 — a staggering 87 per cent decline.
The data reflects the speed at which judges commuted these sentences, slashing resentencing cases by over half by July 2024 before clearing most of them as the year progressed.
A total of 860 death sentences were commuted within 12 months, with just 50 retained. Meanwhile, courts struck out 22 applications on administrative grounds, barring them from reapplying.
Four inmates, however, died in prison before their resentencing applications could be approved.
While the data shows judges largely retained death sentences for murder cases, dozens of drug offenders were not spared.
Still, the number of death row inmates convicted for drug trafficking dropped significantly by January 1 this year, from 840 a year earlier to just 40 — the highest rate of commutations among all offences.
In contrast, death sentences for homicide had the highest rate of retention. On January 1, 2024, there were 435 death row inmates convicted of murder, with 335 of them having their sentences commuted 12 months later.
A total of 100 death sentences were retained.
By gender, male death row inmates had the highest rate of sentence retention, at 137. Only three of the remaining death row inmates are women.
Anti-capital punishment groups such as Hayat, which works with families of death row inmates, said the data signals progress but also highlights gaps.
For instance, the absence of written judgments for resentencing cases was a missed opportunity to provide guidance for fair and just sentencing discretion, the group said.
There is also ambiguity around resentencing for juvenile offenders and those with mental health conditions. Laws governing sentencing for these groups still allow for indefinite imprisonment and the death penalty.
Another issue is whipping, which was not repealed despite the move to abolish the mandatory death penalty. Human rights groups have described whipping as inhumane.