"I wanted to pray but I did not know how. I was at a loss. My heart was empty inside."

On Tuesday (Nov. 19), the court heard this quote along with numerous painful details from 27-year-old Azlin Arujunah's life prior to the alleged murder of her son.

In the months leading up to the five-year-old boy's death, the young then-24-year-old experienced the loss of her mother and grandmother in quick succession.

These tragic events, along with the abuse she received at the hands of her husband, caused Azlin to suffer from an adjustment disorder and a depressed mood.

Azlin and her husband Ridzuan Mega Abdul Rahman, both now 27, are currently on trial for murder with common intention when they allegedly scalded their five-year-old son, who is unnamed due to a gag order, to death.

They are alleged to have abused him repeatedly with various methods such as scalding him with near-boiling water, hitting him with a broom, and confining him to a cat's cage.

The boy eventually died on Oct. 23, 2016.

Azlin's upbringing and her struggles in the lead up to her son's death formed the basis for a debate in court between her lawyer, Thangavelu, and the prosecution's witness Kenneth Koh, a psychiatrist who had assessed her.

While Koh had agreed with an earlier psychiatric report that diagnosed Azlin with an adjustment disorder and a depressed mood at the time of her offences, he maintained that any resulting diminution of her mental responsibility was not of a substantial degree.

Father is a drug addict, she was splashed with hot water as a child

In the process of the discourse, various details of Azlin's life prior to her alleged offence were revealed in court.

According to statements she had given, Azlin had experienced abuse at the hands of her parents, with her father being a drug addict who was eventually sent to prison. Koh also said she had told him that her mother did not show her love.

She had also herself been splashed with hot water as a child.

She eventually went to live with her grandparents and grew very close to her grandmother, who was her primary caregiver.

In more recent years, after becoming a mother, Koh said Azlin worked as a cleaner for about six months, and then stopped work in 2014, after which the family received S$700 per month in social services support.

However, in March 2016, Azlin's grandmother passed away.

The court heard that in the next month, Azlin's husband Ridzuan left the house for about two to three weeks, during which the young mother reported that she had no money and no food, struggling to feed her kids. Koh quoted her saying:

"... everything went downhill... At that time (when Ridzuan left the house) there was no one to help me. I wanted to call my father but did not know what to say. I was at home with four kids and did not know what to do. I had to borrow money from people..."

"Everyone who loved me had left me"

In a statement she gave to police, Azlin said that with her husband gone, and multiple children to take care of, she found herself sitting in front of the phone waiting for her grandmother to call and dispense advice despite the fact that she had passed away a month earlier.

"I felt that everyone who loved me had left me," she said.

Sitting in the dock, Azlin cried while these details were relayed in court.

Thangavelu said Ridzuan eventually returned home in May 2016, but by this time, was unemployed and had also been involved with another woman.

This was followed shortly by the death of Azlin's mother, whom she had only recently started to reconnect with.

Physically abused by husband

Throughout this time, Azlin was allegedly physically abused by her husband.

According to a statement from an aunt, Ridzuan and Azlin fought over financial issues and sometimes borrowed money from her to buy milk powder for their children. But she, too, said Azlin suffered "continuous abuse" at the hands of her husband.

The court heard Ridzuan would beat her with a hose, kick her, slap her, and once cut her on the elbow with a knife.

Thangavelu said that according to Azlin, Ridzuan also kicked her on multiple occasions in the stomach while she was pregnant with all but the last of their children. On one of these occasions, he was arrested, and then bailed out by his sister, but returned "embittered".

Abusing drugs

In order to cope with these "stressors", it also emerged that Azlin allegedly abused drugs.

While being examined by Deputy Public Prosecutor Tan Wen Hsien, Koh told the court that Azlin might have been experiencing drug withdrawal symptoms on Oct. 22, 2016, the date of the final incident of abuse that saw her son taken to hospital.

"She told me she had been taking ice for several days in increased amounts prior to October 22," he said.

However, she was allegedly becoming more agitated during this period because her supply was running low and she did not have an avenue to get more drugs.

Koh also said that Azlin had denied subjecting her other children to the same abuse that her late son suffered.

According to Koh, this showed that she had maintained control over her impulses.

"All her anger and violence appeared to be honed in on the deceased and she was able to restrain herself from attacking the other children, which therefore shows that she had quite a large amount of restraint."

Image from Facebook via Lianhe Zaobao and court documents