Cop who abetted fatal abuse of Myanmar maid loses appeal, gets more jail time

A CCTV system installed in the flat captured 35 days of footage from Jun 21 to Jul 26, 2016, documenting the abuse leading up to Ms Piang Ngaih Don’s death.

The footage showed Chelvam present on multiple occasions while the victim was berated and assaulted, sometimes directly in front of him.

Clips played in court showed five incidents of Chelvam standing by in the kitchen while Gaiyathiri assaulted the victim in the kitchen or toilet.

After Ms Piang Ngaih Don died, Chelvam tried to obstruct investigations by disconnecting the CCTV recorder and lying about its whereabouts.

Chelvam lied to the police that the recorder had been removed six months earlier at a tenant’s request as they were “uncomfortable” with it.

While he was at the house with the police on the day Ms Piang Ngaih Don’s death was discovered, Chelvam also pretended to search the house for the recorder, before claiming he was not able to find it.

APPEAL ARGUMENTS

Chelvam’s lawyer, Mr Ramesh Tiwary, argued that his client did not know the victim had been starved to the point that her life was in danger.

He pointed to evidence given by a doctor who saw Ms Piang Ngaih Don in January and May in the year she died, and noted that the doctor did not think she looked thin between her two visits.

Mr Tiwary also disputed the lower court’s finding that Chelvam and his ex-wife were similarly culpable.

“We have a person who actually deprived a person of food for 35 days and another person who abetted her by not doing anything to stop her. He didn’t instigate her, he didn’t instruct her,” said the defence lawyer, arguing that Chelvam just omitted to act.

However, Deputy Public Prosecutors Stephanie Koh and Sean Teh argued that the critical period was the final weeks of Ms Piang Ngaih Don’s life, between June and July 2016.

The same doctor testified that the victim was extremely emaciated at death, with limbs resembling skin wrapping around bone, Ms Koh said.

Under cross-examination, Chelvam admitted he had noticed her drastic weight loss.

As Ms Piang Ngaih Don’s employer, Chelvam ultimately bore responsibility for ensuring her basis needs were met, but failed in his duty by leaving her care entirely to his ex-wife, Ms Koh argued.

His culpability lay in knowing she was starving and wasting away, yet doing nothing, the prosecution said.

On the charge of causing evidence to disappear, the defence argued that Prema had played a larger role, claiming she initiated the removal of the CCTV recorder.

“It was on her request, her instigation that the recorder was disconnected,” said Mr Tiwary, arguing that Prema tried to smuggle the recorder out of the house “independently” without Chelvam’s knowledge.

But the prosecution countered that Chelvam, as a police officer, knew such actions were offences and still chose to participate.

This is why the lower court judge had found that Chelvam’s culpability was higher than Prema’s, said Ms Koh.

Saying that Chelvam was only protecting Gaiyathiri and Prema and not himself is a mischaracterisation, she added.

“Although he was shielding, he knows that the CCTV captured everything in the house, including his own actions … He knows he would undoubtedly be implicated in the death of his domestic helper in his own home,” said Ms Koh, arguing that Chelvam was motivated to protect himself.

SENTENCE

In their appeal for a heavier sentence for Chelvam’s charge for voluntarily causing hurt, the prosecution said they disagreed with the lower court judge’s finding that this was a single episode.

Knowing about the sustained abuse but still choosing to assault the victim made him the third abuser, Ms Koh said.

Chelvam’s lawyer objected to the prosecution equating knowing about something with being liable for it.

“The person who perpetrates an offence not only knows and is aware of what that person is doing, but is actually doing it. So the sentence for that person ought to be higher,” he added.

Clarifying that he was not disputing the horrendous abuse Ms Piang Ngaih Don had to endure, Mr Tiwary added: “How much of that was actually known to this appellant? Leaving aside the incident where he committed the offence, how much was he aware of? How much of that actually happened when he was at home?”

He argued that his client’s sentence for this charge could not be the same as Prema’s or Gaiyathiri’s because that would ignore the fact that they had many other charges taken into consideration for their sentencing.

Ms Koh replied that while Chelvam may not have known of every single instance that his former wife and mother-in-law were charged with, he knew “to a large degree” that Ms Piang Ngaih Don was being abused almost every day.

The CCTV footage also showed how much time he spent at home, how many opportunities he had to interact with the domestic helper, and how often he witnessed the abuse taking place, said the prosecution.

Chelvam’s lawyer accepted that his client knew about the abuse Ms Piang Ngaih Don went through before he hurt her, but questioned how to translate how much he knew of her previous abuse to a jail sentence.

In dismissing Chelvam’s appeals and increasing his sentence, Justice See said he was not persuaded that the trial judge’s decision to convict him was wrong or that his sentence was “manifestly excessive”.

Chelvam will begin serving his jail sentence on Aug 7. He requested to delay his punishment by one week to spend time with his daughter.