Indian-origin woman serving 14 years in Singapore jail for abusing maid faces further charges

Digital Desk: In court on Thursday, a 64-year-old woman in Singapore of Indian origin who is currently serving a prison sentence for killing her daughter's Myanmarese maid confessed to having asked her son-in-law to take down a CCTV that contained video proof of the crimes.

According to The Straits Times newspaper, Prema S. Naraynasamy is currently serving a 14-year sentence for her part in the abuse of Piang Ngaih Don, a 24-year-old citizen of Myanmar, who passed away in 2016 from a brain injury and severe blunt trauma to her neck following 14 months of continuous assault.

For her role in the maid torture and death, Prema's daughter Gaiyathiri received a 30-year prison term in 2021.

Prema filed a guilty plea on Thursday to one count of ordering her policeman son-in-law, 44-year-old Kevin Chelvam, to destroy the recorder, erasing proof of the crimes.

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According to the prosecution, Prema was aware that Gaiyathiri and her acts were being recorded by CCTV cameras in the home and gave Chelvam the instruction to disconnect the recorder from its power source to dispose of it because she did not want the police to have the footage.

Despite his initial reluctance, Chelvam allegedly went through and handed Prema the device when she insisted on it. However, when a police officer demanded to see the CCTV footage, Chelvam allegedly lied and said there wasn't any, according to the prosecution.

Prema instructed her daughter-in-law in Tamil, "I have kept something in your bag, do something with it," when she approached her while the police were still on the scene and slipped the CCTV recorder into her bag, according to the report.

Prema's son requested a friend to keep the recorder after receiving it from the daughter-in-law. Unaware of the recorder's importance to police investigations, his friend agreed and grabbed the CCTV camera from him.

When police asked for the recorder at Prema's son and daughter-in-law's house, the son persuaded a friend to return it, and the recorder was found.

 

 Prema's defense attorney requested a sentence between 18 and 24 months in prison in place of the minimum of three years sought by the prosecution.

The case was postponed because the judge indicated that she wanted more time to think through the sentence, according to the BBC.