Death of Ramapiram Kannickaisparry

On the evening of 17 April 1995 at 6 pm, 38-year-old Soh Jin Chwee was jogging along the forest of Ulu Sembawang when he discovered the body of a woman lying in the undergrowth. Due to great shock, Soh did not immediately report the finding and instead, he told his brother about the gruesome discovery. The police were contacted the next day by Soh's brother, and subsequently, an autopsy report by forensic pathologist Dr Paul Chui revealed that the woman had thirteen stab wounds on her head and neck, and also sustained broken ribs and pelvis, which showed that she could be run over by a vehicle.[1][2]

The woman was identified as 39-year-old production operator Ramapiram Kannickaisparry, who was married to an army officer Munisamy Pandian, with whom she had two sons. She was separated from her husband at the time she was killed. She was last seen alive at 12.15 pm in the afternoon at her workplace Apple Computer, six hours before Soh's discovery of her death and her corpse. Several tyre marks were found on the wet mud near the corpse. The police investigations were led by Inspector Richard Lim Beng Gee, who was known for cracking several high-profile cases (which included the Anthony Ler case, Oriental Hotel murder, Bulgarian lady murder and the Koh Ngiap Yong murder case).[3][4]

Three days later, the police arrested a suspect, who was a 40-year-old mechanic named Nadasan Chandra Secharan, the younger brother of Ramapiram's brother-in-law, outside his Yishun flat. Nadasan was married with three children and worked as a mechanic at the Seletar Country Club at the time of his arrest. Prior to his arrest, both Nadasan and Ramapiram were engaged in an affair after they first met each other in 1991 at a family gathering in his brother's house, and Ramapiram's husband got wind of the affair some time after it started, which caused them to live in separation.[5][3] Nadasan was charged with murder on 22 April 1995, two days after his arrest.[6][7]

A broken tooth was found inside Nadasan's van, in addition to some gold items and jewellery, which were purportedly belonging to the deceased victim. By the time the tooth was found, the body of Ramapiram was returned to her bereaved family and cremated, hence it cannot be compared if it belonged to her. As there were no DNA experts in Singapore at the time, the tooth was thus sent to the forensic experts of Scotland Yard in Britain for DNA testing. After some testing, it was confirmed to belong to Ramapiram.[8]

On 20 November 1996, the Court of Appeal heard the appeal of Nadasan Chandra Secharan and delivered its verdict on 14 January 1997.[21][22][23]

Having carefully scrutinized the case, the Court of Appeal found it was unacceptable to rely on the testimony of the Grade One mechanic whom the prosecution called upon, as based on Nadasan's mechanic skills, he himself was not a Grade One mechanic and he was also unable to spend a short period of twenty minutes to fix the van, and at the time he was fixing the van, it was raining and it happened to be Nadasan's lunchtime, and since he was not in a hurry, they accepted that Nadasan took more than one hour to repair the van. They also found that this particular witness did not have a prior understanding of the state of Nadasan's van before giving his testimony, hence they rejected his testimony.[24]

The three judges - consisting of Chief Justice Yong Pung How, and two Judges of Appeal L P Thean and M Karthigesu - also rejected the evidence of the prosecution's New Zealander expert, as the results clearly showed that there was only a probability of one in 133 that the tyre marks belonged to Nadasan's van. Given that there was a low possibility that the tyre marks came from Nadasan's van, the three judges found that the results were not rigorous enough to show that they were definitely of Nadasan’s vehicle and hence concluded that this part of evidence cannot be relied on as well to convict Nadasan of murder.[23]

The Court of Appeal also noted that although the DNA tests on the broken tooth had indeed proven that it belonged to Ramapiram, they pointed out that the tooth had more than one person's DNA profile and was contaminated, which raise doubts over the validity of the DNA results, and the broken tooth cannot be conclusively matched to the deceased Ramapiram's teeth since the corpse was cremated before the discovery of the tooth in the back of Nadasan's van. Also, even if the tooth was indeed Ramapiram's, there was no evidence to show that the tooth broke off as a result of a collision by Nadasan's van, and since the van and Nadasan's clothes and tools (which were all washed) had no traces of the victim's DNA, human tissue or blood, it was unlikely that Nadasan was responsible for the murder. Besides, the tooth could have broke off some months before the murder, and the testimonies of Ramapiram's family members showed that Ramapiram had a habit of using her teeth to open beer bottles, and Nadasan explained that he often ate and drank with Ramapiram at the back of the van during their past moments together. These above explanations lent credence to the theory that Ramapiram herself broke her tooth when opening beer bottles a long time prior to her death.[24]

The Court of Appeal determined that the gold items found inside Nadasan's van might not belong to Ramapiram, since they were common gold items and they could have been lost by other people, and Nadasan used the van to fetch wedding guests on several occasions. The Court of Appeal also agreed that it was a coincidence that the van broke down on the day of the murder, and it was not surprising at all given the van was about twenty years old and it was not in a good condition. The six hours from the time she was last seen alive until the time she was discovered dead was considered long enough to allow the possibility of someone else murdering Ramapiram.[23] The three judges also criticized the prosecution for their weak case, as well as the trial judge Lai Kew Chai for his weak judgement and lack of precise consideration in reaching the verdict.[9]

As such, the Court of Appeal unanimously found Nadasan not guilty of murder, and they granted him an acquittal. This led to Nadasan's death sentence revoked and his conviction overturned, and hence, Nadasan was released from Changi Prison on the same date his appeal was allowed.[25][24]

The appeal ruling was widely reported in the media, because it was extremely rare in Singapore for the Court of Appeal, the highest court of the nation, to acquit convicted killers of murder and dismissing their death sentences. According to Nadasan's lawyer Subhas Anandan, his client cried openly in court and shed tears of relief and happiness when the Court of Appeal allowed his appeal.[9][25][26]

It was also reported that Ramapiram's husband was extremely shocked at the Court of Appeal's decision to acquit Nadasan, because he kept considering Nadasan guilty of his wife's killing, and even at the very least, expected Nadasan to be sentenced to life imprisonment if he was guilty of manslaughter. However, he expressed he would move on with his life and continue raising his two sons, then aged 12 and 23 respectively. After receiving news about Nadasan's appeal while in India, Ramapiram's mother, who also had six more children in addition to Ramapiram, was stunned about the ruling but stated she hoped to know the truth and who really killed her daughter, whose death she and the rest of the family kept secret from Ramapiram's father, who had a chronic heart condition.[27][28]

• Capital punishment in Singapore
• Death of Lim Shiow Rong
• Death of Winnifred Teo
• List of major crimes in Singapore
• List of unsolved murders (1980–1999)