Nagaenthran Dharmalingam, a mentally disabled Indian-origin Malaysian man found guilty of drug trafficking, was executed in Singapore on Wednesday, according to his family, after a court dismissed his mother’s last-ditch legal challenge in a high-profile case that drew global attention and calls for clemency.
Dharmalingam, 34, was caught in 2009 for smuggling 42.72 grams of heroin into Singapore, which has some of the strictest drug restrictions in the world, and was sentenced to death the following year. He was apprehended at the Woodlands Checkpoint (a causeway link with Peninsular Malaysia) while entering Singapore, with a package of narcotics strapped to his thigh. His brother Navin Kumar informed Malaysia’s official news agency Bernama that the execution took place on Wednesday morning and that the funeral will take place in the Malaysian town of Ipoh.
Dharmalingam had spent more than a decade on death row and had exhausted all legal options. He was supposed to be hung on November 10th, last year, but he filed a last-minute challenge. He spent over a decade filing legal challenges, but they were all dismissed by Singapore’s courts. Last year, a request for a presidential pardon was also denied. ‘The Court of Appeal determined that this constituted the functioning of a criminal mind, evaluating the dangers and opposing rewards involved with the unlawful behavior in question,’ the Singapore Ministry of Home Affairs stated previously.
His mother, who traveled to the Singapore court from northern Malaysia, was unsuccessful in her last-minute bid to preserve her son on Tuesday. The court denied his mother’s last-ditch appeal, saying Dharmalingam had received ‘due process in line with the law,’ causing his family to cry in public. The government stated that he ‘obviously comprehended the nature of his activities.’
‘This is a last-minute application, brought just two days before the scheduled execution, and is Nagaenthran’s seventh application (excluding appeals) since his appeal against conviction was dismissed by the Court of Appeal in 2011, more than ten years ago,’ Singapore’s Attorney General’s Chambers said on Wednesday.
‘It is the latest attempt to abuse the court’s processes and unjustifiably delay the carrying into effect of the lawful sentence imposed on Nagaenthran,’ it said. Dharmalingam’s case was highly controversial as he was assessed by a medical expert to have an IQ of 69 – a level that indicates an intellectual disability.
The decision to kill him attracted global condemnation owing to worries about his intellectual disability, with the United Nations, the European Union, and British entrepreneur Richard Branson among those criticizing it. Those found with more than 15g of heroin face the death sentence in Singapore. Singapore resumed executions this month, following a two-year hiatus when it killed another drug trafficker.
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