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A 37-year-old Malaysian man, Punithan Genasan, who was convicted of drug trafficking and sentenced to death in 2020, has been acquitted by the Court of Appeal.

The court made its decision after considering an appeal with new evidence.

Judgment and acquittal

The court, comprising Chief Justice Sundaresh Menon, Justice Andrew Phang and Justice Tay Yong Kwang, released their judgment on Monday, Nov. 1. It can be read here.

They decided to acquit Punithan because there was reasonable doubt over whether a supposed meeting between Punithan and two other drug couriers took place.

Punithan originally found guilty and sentenced to death

Back in May 2020, Punithan, a debt collector, was found guilty of being complicit in trafficking at least 28.5 g of heroin, The Straits Times (ST) reported.

He supposedly introduced two other drug couriers, Mohd Sueif Ismail and V Shanmugam Veloo to each other on Oct. 12, 2011 to facilitate a drug transaction.

This meeting supposedly took place at the carpark of a West Coast McDonald's restaurant.

Punithan also was accused of instructing one of them to drive into S'pore to meet the other, two weeks afterwards.

He left Singapore on Oct. 12, 2011, and was later extradited to Singapore in 2016.

At the trial

Punithan's trial, which started in Jan. 2018, saw him being accused of separately recruiting Shanmugam and Sueif, and introducing the two at a carpark of McDonald's at West Coast Park on Oct. 12, 2011.

According to ST, Shanmugam was offered money to drive into Singapore, while Sueif was to help him receive and deliver shipments of heroin from Malaysia.

Shanmugam and Sueif were arrested while in the midst of delivering heroin on Oct. 28, 2011, shortly after Shanmugam drove to Singapore in a car containing 10 bundles of heroin and picked up Suief at a bus stop at Haw Par Villa.

Punithan was also accused of taking possession of the car for a few hours on Oct. 27, 2011, and was implicated as the "mastermind" behind the transaction by Shanmugam.

Alibi defence rejected by judge

However, Punithan denied any connection to Sueif and Shanmugam. They had testified that Punithan recruited them to transport drugs, linked them up and arranged the transaction.

But Punithan disputed this and called a friend, Gobi Krishna Karuppiah, and his wife as witnesses to support his claim that he never met the couriers, and that it was impossible for him to have planted the drugs in the car.

He said he did not meet the others on Oct. 12. He was focused on collecting a debt, and was accompanied by Gobi Krishna, ST reported.

Punithan also said he could not have passed the car to Shanmugam in Johor on Oct 27, as he was in Kedah celebrating Deepavali with his family.

Judge's remarks

However, while High Court judge Chan Seng Onn accepted that Punithan was in Singapore on Oct. 12 to collect a debt, there was "ample time" for him to meet the drug couriers, based on immigration records.

He also said that the testimony of Punithan's wife that he was in Kedah on Oct. 27 must be "treated with caution" as she was an interested witness.

"The judge could not rule out that Mr Gobi would lie to protect Punithan. He noted that the witness could 'astoundingly' recall the events eight years ago in minute detail but his 'superhuman memory' failed him when asked other questions," ST reported.

Court of Appeal's rationale

In the 2022 decision, the Court of Appeal said the "central question" of the appeal was whether the alleged introductory meeting between the three men took place on Oct. 12, 2011.

This is because that alleged meeting is the link between Punithan and the drug transaction that took place in Singapore on Oct. 28, 2011.

Therefore, the Prosecution had to prove beyond reasonable doubt that the alleged meeting did take place, in order to prove the common intent of Punithan and the couriers to traffic in the drugs.

Discrepancies in evidence

The court said, "There were discrepancies in evidence as to the date and the time of day of the Alleged Introductory Meeting at the 2014 Trial and the 2018 Trial."

According to Immigration and Checkpoints Authority (ICA) records, on Oct. 2011, Shanmugam was in Singapore on a number of occasions. Punithan was in Singapore twice, Oct. 11 and Oct. 12.

The only day where both Shanmugam and Punithan were in Singapore was Oct. 12.

Both Shanmugam and Sueif asserted during the trials that their meeting with Punithan supposedly took place in the afternoon or the evening.

Meeting could not have taken place in the afternoon or evening, as claimed by the drug couriers

However, according to ICA's records of Oct. 12, Shanmugam was in Singapore from 7.24am to 9.36am (about two hours), having entered and later exited through the Woodlands Checkpoint.

Meanwhile, Punithan was in Singapore on Oct 12 from 7.04am to 12.19pm (about five hours).

Therefore, a meeting between the two could only have taken place in the morning, and not the afternoon or evening as alleged by the couriers.

The court said:

"As matters stood, we did not know even after the remittal hearing why the Couriers stated in their 2011 investigation statements that the Alleged Introductory Meeting took place in the afternoon or in the evening when it was obvious from the ICA travel movement records that the only time that the meeting could have taken place was in the early part of the morning of 12 October 2011.

Accordingly, there remained a lingering reasonable doubt as to the time of the alleged introductory meeting and therefore a reasonable doubt about whether the couriers were indeed testifying about the meeting of 12 October 2011."

Decision does not affect other convictions of Suief and Shanmugam.

The court emphasised that their acquittal of Punithan does not affect the sentences of Suief and Shanmugam, who were found to be in the possession of drugs and in the process of distributing them.

They were convicted in 2015. Shanmugam, then 30, was sentenced to life imprisonment and 15 strokes of the cane. Suief, then 46, was given the death sentence.

Punithan was represented by a team of lawyers from K&L Gates Straits Law, led by Senior Counsel Narayanan Sreenivasan.

His lawyers produced fresh evidence in support of his case, including investigation statements recorded from Suief and Shanmugam in 2011, the Singtel call trace report for Suief’s mobile phone, and ICA travel movement records for Shanmugam, his foster mother, his foster daughter, and his brother.

Top image via Wikimedia Commons.