Ahmad Muin Yaacob

On 25 November 2016, at Tanah Merah Ferry Terminal, Singapore, during a heated argument, Ahmad Muin bin Yaacob, a 23-year-old Malaysian cleaner, killed his 54-year-old supervisor Maimunah binte Awang by stabbing her with a pair of grass cutters and bludgeoning her on the head repeatedly. He stole Maimunah's jewellery and abandoned her body in a drain before he fled back to his hometown in Pasir Puteh, Kelantan, Malaysia. He pawned some of the jewellery for money to afford his wedding expenses. Ahmad was arrested by the Royal Malaysia Police a month later on 18 December 2016, merely nine days after his marriage. Ahmad was extradited back to Singapore the next day to be charged with intentional murder. On 4 November 2020, Ahmad was found guilty of a lesser charge of murder (without an intention to kill) in his trial and he was sentenced to the minimum sentence of life imprisonment and eighteen strokes of the cane, after the prosecution agreed to not argue for the death penalty in his case.

Death of Maimunah Awang

On 25 November 2016, the corpse of a woman was discovered abandoned in the canal with a depth of 1.8m at Tanah Merah Ferry Terminal. She was pronounced dead at the scene when the paramedics arrived at the scene.

The woman was identified as 54-year-old Maimunah binte Awang, who worked as the cleaning supervisor at the terminal. At the time of her death, Maimunah was widowed and she was survived by five children, including three daughters. It was revealed to the police that one of her daughters had reported Maimunah missing just hours before the gruesome discovery, because they could not contact her repeatedly and Maimunah was last seen at the terminal's storeroom around noon on 24 November 2016, the day before the discovery of her death. Maimunah's two gold bracelets and two gold necklaces were also missing when her body was found with several stab wounds and bruises on her neck, head and chest. Maimunah was described by her colleagues to be a nice-mannered and good-hearted woman who treated the cleaners well and never argued with anyone at her workplace. Her youngest daughter reportedly fainted at the scene when seeing her mother's body.

According to Dr Teo Eng Swee, a forensic pathologist who performed the autopsy on Maimunah, he certified that the cause of death was a stab wound to the neck (which caused severe bleeding), as well as severe head injuries. He was of the opinion that either one of the injuries themselves could independently cause the death of Maimunah. He also opined that the murder weapon could be a scissors-like object, given there was a X-shaped crack onto the neck bone of Maimunah, located right at the part where Maimunah was stabbed.

Investigations and Ahmad's arrest

The officers of the Singapore Police Force classified the case of Maimunah's death as murder, and they investigated the case. Shortly after, the police found a potential suspect, as at the time of Maimunah's murder, one of the four cleaners under Maimunah was absent from work and uncontactable since the day Maimunah was last seen alive. The cleaner was 23-year-old Ahmad Muin Yaacob, a Malaysian who came from Kelantan to Singapore since October 2016 on a temporary work permit. According to the cleaners, Ahmad was said to have been retrenched from work and had to return to Malaysia, and he was stressed as he was in dire need for money to afford his wedding expenses.

The police found that at 1pm, less than an hour after Maimunah was last seen alive, Ahmad had left for Malaysia via the Woodlands Checkpoint. They contacted the Polis Diraja Malaysia (or the Royal Malaysia Police) for their assistance to arrest Ahmad and issued a warrant of arrest to capture Ahmad outside Singapore's jurisdiction. The Malaysian police investigated and managed to trace Ahmad's whereabouts. On 18 December 2016, Ahmad was arrested at his hometown at Pasih Puteh, Kelantan, Malaysia. He was handed over to the Singaporean police officers at Kuala Lumpur International Airport the next day and sent back to Singapore. Sekher Warrier, senior assistant commissioner of the Singapore Police Force, thanked their Malaysian counterparts for their assistance in arresting Ahmad and bringing him to justice, showing a testament to the long years of cooperation between both countries.

Two days after his arrival, on 21 December 2016, Ahmad was officially charged with murder at the State Courts of Singapore, and remanded for police investigations. Ahmad reportedly asked if he can be spared from the death penalty should he cooperate fully with the authorities. The district judge John Ng, however, replied this was not up to him to decide, and he added that counsel would be assigned to him by the state.

Ahmad's confession

Upon his arrest and being brought into custody of the Singapore authorities, Ahmad Muin Yaacob broke down during police interrogations and confessed out of guilt that he killed Maimunah Awang.

Ahmad, who was born in 1993 at Kelantan and the seventh of eleven children in his family, told the police that he was engaged to an unnamed woman and due to marry her on 9 December 2016, ten days before his arrest. But he was unable to afford the wedding expenses and so, in October 2016, he accepted an offer to go to Singapore to work as a cleaner for a monthly salary of S$1,100 on a temporary work permit, so as to earn more money to fund his wedding. Barely one month into his job however, Ahmad was told by his employer in early November that his contract and permit would be terminated as there was not enough budget for the cleaners and out of the four Malaysian cleaners working under Maimunah, only Ahmad has a temporary permit while the rest had permanent permits. Later, after some begging and pleading, Ahmad was allowed to continue to work until he found another job. He was scheduled to return to Malaysia on 28 November 2016 for wedding preparations. Ahmad, who was desperate for more money to cover his wedding costs, began to borrow money from his colleagues, including Maimunah, who was his supervisor at work. At the time of the murder, he owed Maimunah S$70.

According to Ahmad, Maimunah was kind to him and despite this being a violation of workplace rules, she allowed Ahmad to sleep at the storeroom of their workplace when he told her he had no place to spend the night in Singapore. Ahmad recounted that on the day of the murder, he met Maimunah alone in the storeroom, and asked to borrow more money. But this discussion escalated into a heated argument between Ahmad and Maimunah. Maimunah allegedly insulted Ahmad's family and called him "bodoh", which means stupid in Malay. It purportedly provoked Ahmad into punching the elderly woman and he picked up a grass cutter to stab Maimunah's neck and chest, and although Maimunah pleaded for mercy, Ahmad persisted in the assault and he used the cutter to stab Maimunah and hit her repeatedly on the head until she stopped moving. After the death of 54-year-old Maimunah binte Awang, Ahmad took her two gold necklaces and two gold bracelets, as well as her phone. He then removed the covers of a nearby drain, pushed Maimunah's corpse into it, then replaced the covers in order to hide the body. He subsequently washed and cleaned up the crime scene before he fled the workplace with Maimunah's phone and jewellery, and later fled to Malaysia.

Ahmad pawned one of the bracelets at Johor for RM1,000, and he took a bus to return to his hometown at the Malaysian state of Kelantan, where he additionally pawned Maimunah's two necklaces and remaining bracelet for RM7,500. Out of the money he received, Ahmad spent RM6,000 for the dowry and used some money to gamble. He later sold the pawn ticket to another pawnshop for RM1,054 and used part of the proceeds to cover his wedding expenses. His wedding took place as usual on 9 December 2016, and barely nine days after he got married, 23-year-old Ahmad Muin bin Yaacob was finally arrested for murdering 54-year-old Maimunah binte Awang.

Murder charge and life imprisonment

Trial proceedings

On 17 September 2019, three years after the killing of Maimunah binte Awang, the trial of 26-year-old Ahmad Muin bin Yaacob first took place at the High Court. Ahmad was represented by both Hassan Esa Almenoar and Rajan Supramaniam, while Deputy Public Prosecutor Mohamed Faizal Mohamed Abdul Kadir, Selena Yap and Kumarsen Gohulabalan from the Attorney-General's Chambers were in charge of the prosecution. Justice Aedit Abdullah of the High Court was the presiding judge of the case. If found guilty of murder under Section 300(a) of the Penal Code, which dictates an offence of premeditated murder with intention to kill, Ahmad would face the mandatory sentence of death.

The prosecution based their case on Ahmad's confession and 56 witnesses were questioned during the trial. The prosecution argued that Ahmad had intentionally attacked and harmed Maimunah with the intention to rob her of her gold items, and seeing that the victim was alone in the storeroom, he also took undue advantage of the victim's age and vulnerability to initiate the assault without mercy for the victim, which resulting in Ahmad killing Maimunah. DPP Mohamed Faizal, in his own words, described the ungratefulness of Ahmad for attacking the person who helped him before, "The accused (Ahmad) repaid her (Maimunah's) kindness in blood," For the defence, while they did not dispute the prosecution's case of events, they argued that Ahmad lost his self-control and was gravely provoked into killing Maimunah due to Maimunah allegedly insulting Ahmad's family and called him stupid, and they also attempted to raise the partial defence of diminished responsibility against Ahmad's murder charge. However, Dr Kenneth Koh, the government psychiatrist of the Institute of Mental Health, had earlier assessed Ahmad and found that he did not suffer from any major mental illnesses. The trial dragged on for more than a year, with the delay in court proceedings being caused by the infectious COVID-19 pandemic in Singapore during the year 2020.

Conviction and sentencing

On 4 November 2020, Ahmad, who declined to go on the stand to give his defence, was found guilty of murder under Section 300(c) of the Penal Code, after the prosecution reduced the original Section 300(a) murder charge (equivalent to murder with intention to kill) to the finalized Section 300(c) charge and the defence pleading guilty to it. This offence of murder dictates an act where a person intentionally inflicts a injury on another person, such that the injury itself is sufficient to cause death, and it is punishable by either death or life imprisonment with mandatory caning. Despite the fact that Ahmad would potentially be sentenced to the gallows for Maimunah's murder, the prosecution decided to not seek the death penalty after some representations from the defence, and both sides sought a life sentence for Ahmad. By then, Ahmad's defence counsel were replaced by Eugene Thuraisingam, a leading criminal lawyer who took over the case with his law firm's two colleagues Johannes Hadi and Chooi Jing Yen.

Two members from the prosecution - Selena Yap and Kumaresan Gohulabalan - argued that Ahmad should be subjected to the maximum of 24 strokes of the cane. They argued that there were aggravating factors in Ahmad's case that called for the maximum number of strokes of caning warranted. They pointed out that Ahmad demonstrated a lack of remorse for his crime, as he gone to lengths to cover up his conduct by disposing of the body, cleaning up the crime scene, and even misappropriated the gold items of Maimunah after her death in order to pay for his wedding expenses and chose to flee to Malaysia rather than surrendering himself.

From the defence's side though, Thuraisingam, Chooi and Hadi sought 12 strokes of the cane, as they highlighted the extenuating factors in their mitigation plea for Ahmad, pointing out that Ahmad had rendered his full cooperation to the police and confessed from the start, demonstrating his full remorse over the murder. They also stated that the crime happened not out of cold blood, but during a heated argument that resulted in Ahmad going physical and killing Maimunah, an act which was not planned or premeditated beforehand. They also summed up the current plight of Ahmad, whose wife divorced him, in their own words, "He (Ahmad) will spend the rest of his life away from his family and native land, reliving the events of that terrible, fateful day which have led him to where he is now."

In the end, 27-year-old Ahmad Muin bin Yaacob was sentenced to life imprisonment and 18 strokes of the cane. The trial judge Aedit Abdullah agreed that the circumstances of the case did not call for the imposition of capital punishment, but while he conceded to the imposition of life imprisonment, Justice Aedit stated that the severity of the attack, the presence of weapons, the theft of the victim's property and other aggravating factors of the case were persuasively sufficient for the sentence of life and 18 strokes of the cane to be awarded in Ahmad's case. Ahmad, who did not appeal the verdict, is currently serving his sentence at Changi Prison, with the sentence backdated to his date of arrest on 19 December 2016.

Aftermath

At the sentencing trial of Ahmad, Maimunah's family members were present in the courtroom to hear the verdict on sentence. According to one of Maimunah's three daughters, she found closure with the judgement and was fine with the sentence despite expecting a harsher penalty, and also stated that regardless of Ahmad's sentence for her mother's murder, her mother could not return to life and she was resting in peace. Another one of Maimunah's daughters also told ''The Straits Times'' that the loss of their mother was huge and hard for them to accept at the initial stage.

In April 2021, Singaporean crime docu-series ''Crimewatch'' re-adapted and dramatized the Tanah Merah Ferry Terminal murder case and aired the re-enactment as the first episode of the show's annual season, which covers the process of police investigations in the case, the capture of Ahmad, and how the police solved the case. The case was also featured on the "Crime Files" section of the Singapore Police Force's official website as one of the significant cases solved by the police in recent years.

See also

* Kho Jabing
* Caning in Singapore
* Life imprisonment in Singapore
* Capital punishment in Singapore

References

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Murder in Singapore
Caning in Singapore
2016 murders in Singapore
Life imprisonment in Singapore
Malaysian prisoners sentenced to life imprisonment
Prisoners sentenced to life imprisonment by Singapore
Incidents of violence against women
Deaths by stabbing in Singapore
Violence against women in Singapore
Malaysian people convicted of murder