Indian-origin woman serving jail term in Singapore for fatally abusing maid faces further charges

A 64-year-old Indian-origin woman in Singapore, serving a jail term for fatally abusing her daughter's Myanmarese maid, admitted in court on Thursday of asking her son-in-law to remove a CCTV that held evidence of the crimes. Prema S Naraynasamy is currently serving a 14-year sentence for her role in the abuse of 24-year-old Myanmar national Piang Ngaih Don, who died of a brain injury with severe blunt trauma to her neck in 2016 after 14 months of repeated abuse, The Straits Times newspaper reported.

Prema's daughter, Gaiyathiri, was sentenced to 30 years in jail in 2021 for her involvement in the maid abuse and death.

Prema pleaded guilty on Thursday to one count of instigating her policeman son-in-law, 44-year-old Kevin Chelvam, to cause evidence of the offences to disappear by removing the recorder.


The prosecution said Prema knew that her and Gaiyathiri's actions were captured by closed-circuit television recorder (CCTV) cameras in the house and directed Chelvam to dismantle the recorder from its power source to dispose of it as she did not want police to get hold of the footage.

Chelvam, initially reluctant to do so, allegedly proceeded on Prema's insistence and handed the device to her, and upon being asked by a police officer to produce the CCTV footage, lied that there was no footage, the prosecution said.

Prema slipped the CCTV recorder into her daughter-in-law's bag, who came while the police were still at the premises, and told her in Tamil, "I have kept something in your bag, do something with it," the report said.

The daughter-in-law gave Prema's son the recorder, who then asked a friend to keep it. His friend agreed and took the CCTV recorder from him, not knowing what its relevance to police investigations was.

The recorder was recovered when police officers went to Prema's son and daughter-in-law's home asking for it, and the son got his friend to return the item.

The prosecution has asked for at least three years in jail for Prema, while the defence lawyer asked for between 18 and 24 months in jail instead.

The judge said she needed more time to consider the sentencing and adjourned the case to a later date, the report said.