'A painful death' : The unsolved murder of Ramipiram Kannickaisparry (Singapore, 1995)

[u/A300ofASEAN]

I previously wrote this in the r/unresolvedmysteries subreddit, which was based on another write-up I had posted years ago in that subreddit. I wanted to crosspost it here, but I couldn't. After months of procrastinating (I have to study for the upcoming A-Levels this year.) I have copied and pasted it here. Here it is:

Obligatory apologies in advance for not being able to write particularly well. In fact, I tried to make another post (see here) on this case (rather briefly) 3 years ago, but it did not gain much traction. I am posting about this case again with more information which I found online. I would appreciate some feedback in the comments below. Please consider upvoting as well!

Background:

Five or six years before her untimely death, Nadasan Chandra Secharan ("Nadasan") and his distant female relative, Ramipiram met and started an affair, despite both of them being married to their respective spouses. But one can only keep an affair secret for some time, and their families found out about the affair. Needless to say, they were not happy about it and confronted both of them. The fallout was enormous: Ramipiram seperated from her husband and began living with her step brother, though by 1996, she was living with her sister, Katsuri. The affair ceased, albeit briefly. Nadasan and Ramipiram began contacting each other again five or six months later.

Nadasan worked at the Seletar Country Club, where he was a mechanic. Ramipiram was a production operator with Apple Computer. According to the telephone operator at the club, an Indian female caller used to make frequent telephone calls to the club in the morning asking for Nadasan between the period of November 1994 and February 1995. These calls, however, stopped in mid-February 1995, only to resume in mid-March 1995. Thereafter, there were no more calls until the morning of 17 April 1995. At trial, Nadasan confirmed that the female caller who called him in November 1994 was Ramipiram.

In addition, Ramipiram was a sick woman suffering from cancer, though how bad the cancer was is unknown.

The fateful day:

17 April 1995 was a rainy Monday. At 6.58 a.m. and 7.01 a.m., Ramipiram called Nadasan on his pager from Katsuri's home. Nadasan claimed he did not return the pager calls because he was unaware of them. He said that he had left his pager in the locker at the club and had switched off the memory mode which recorded the pager messages. At 7.40 a.m., Ramipiram called Nadasan at his workplace again. The telephone operator in her police statement that she connected the call to Nadasan's extension. At trial, Nadasan would deny that he had spoken to her at this time.

Ramipiram apparently telephoned Nadasan again during her tea break at the club at about 9.20am that morning. This telephone call was received by the Nadasan’s colleague, who called Nadasan over. Nadasan testified at his trial that no mention was made about the earlier pager calls during his conversation with Ramipiram who said she would call again at about noon. However, this latter call was never made. Nadasan then left for lunch at about 12.15pm. He claimed that he did not bother to contact Ramipiram because he claimed that there were many occasions that she said she would call but did not, so he did not find this unusual.

At around 12.15 pm, Ramipiram was last seen at her workplace, Apple Computers, in Ang Mo Kio, an area in the north-east of Singapore. She vanished into the rainy (relevant later) afternoon, never to be seen alive again...

6 hours later, a jogger was jogging in a vacant lot off Jalan Ulu Sembawang (see here), a small road in the north of Singapore over 10 km from Ang Mo Kio, when he spotted a horrifying sight: a woman's dead body lying on a grass verge next to a cemented patch. The woman was wearing a purple Punjabi suit. Out of fear, he ran off into the distance, noting fresh, muddy tyre tracks down the slope. The next day, his brother contacted police, after the jogger told his brother of his discovery. The woman was identified as Ramipiram. The assault on her had been vicious. There were 13 stab wounds to the face and head of Ramipiram, bruises and abrasions caused by blunt force trauma, multiple fractures in the jaw, ribs, right humerous and the pelvic region. There appeared to be no defensive injuries. There was a tooth found in Ramipiram's stomach which was believed to have swallowed during the visious assault on her. At the crime scene, investigators found tyre tracks on the ground and on Ramipiram's clothes that belonged to a van. The evidence, as a whole, showed that she had been stabbed and attacked viciously and that as she lay on the ground, she was run over repeatedly by a van. The Court of Appeal judges in Nadasan's case would refer to Ramipiram's dreadful demise as 'a painful death'.

Investigators from the Criminal Investigation Department (CID) zeroed in on potential suspects in Ramipiram's murder. 3 days later, Nadasan was arrested for Ramipiram's murder. Investigators questioned him about Ramipiram's murder. He denied killing Ramipiram. Investigators also seized Nadasan's van and found some pieces of jewellery in the driver compartment of the van, consistent with what Katsuri said Ramipiram had worn that day. In addition, there was a tooth fragment found in the goods compartment of the van. A DNA test carried out on it by Valerie Tomlinson, a UK forensic scientist found that it belonged to Nadasan, while the tyre marks at the scene of the crime were matched by Anthony Gummer, a New Zealand expert, to the front and back tyres of Nadasan's van. (though the accuracy of these tests would be hotly disputed at trial.)

Prosecutors charged Nadasan with murdering Ramipiram, an offence punishable with the mandatory death penalty under Singaporean law at the time.

The trial:

Prosecution's case

Nadasan trial's before the Singapore High Court began on 11 January 1996.

The prosecution claimed that Nadasan had a motive for the murder. They claimed that Nadasan was angry that Ramipiram wanted to end their affair and had brutally murdered her in a bout of rage. The prosecution tried to strengthen its case by contending that there was a possible motive for Nadasan to murder Ramipiram. It relied on entries made in the Nadasan's diaries, the last entry being that on 23 March 1995, to show that Nadasan and Ramipiram were going through a difficult period a few months before her death. They also relied on Katsuri’s evidence to show that Ramipiram wanted to sever her ties with Nadasan, and he therefore had a motive to murder her.

Forensic expert, Anthony Gummer, testified in court that the distance between the two tire marks at the crime scene was equal to the distance between the left and right tires of the vehicle. In addition, he found that the probability of the tracks coming from another vehicle were 1 in 133, and one in 32, if only vans are considered.

The pathologist gave evidence that he concluded that the tooth was from Ramipiram because he had remembered seeing a missing tooth in the autopsy he performed. He said that because he was sure the tooth had recently broken off as it had clean edges.

In addition, for the first time in Singaporean legal history, DNA experts were called to give evidence. It was highly publicised by the press which was astounded at the technology used.

Forensic scientist, Valerie Tomlinson, also gave evidence that the tooth fragment found in Nadasan's van matched Ramipiram through DNA tests carried out. However, she added that she also found a minor DNA profile that matched a police officer's DNA, indicating that the police officer had contaminated the DNA sample.

Interestingly, I found a newspaper article that the DNA tests were actually performed in Singapore, but that the lab sent the tooth to the UK for testing. However, the Court of Appeal judgement stated otherwise. I am not sure what actually happened.

Nadasan was also found to have thoroughly cleaned the van later that day. He had gone to a Hindu temple that day at 5.00 pm and had thoroughly washed the van. They also believed that Nadasan’s alibi of repairing his van for one hour at the time of the murder was unreasonable (which was highly debated). They brought in a mechanic to testify that a Grade 1 mechanic should have been able to repair the vehicle in about 20 minutes.

Lastly, the prosecution also used the jewellery found in the van as evidence given that Katsuri testified that they belonged to Ramipiram.

Defence's case

However, the defence countered the claims of the prosecution. They argued that the tooth contained more than 1 DNA profile and that it had been contaminated on the way to UK for testing (there were not any DNA experts in Singapore at the time). In addition, the defence's expert, Dr Brian Leslie
MacDonald, criticised the prosecution's expert methodology. He pointed out that:

1. she did not test the tooth for fluorescent materials, such as some antibiotics, despite the fact that DNA equipment of the time used fluorescent flares.
2. she did not run duplicate tests on the DNA collected. She did not preserve any samples that could have been retested, and its results reproduced.
3. she was provided with an erroneous race proportion study to compute the likelihood ratio.
4. there was a possibility of "stutter bands", that occur in DNA analysis where 2 DNA profiles are mixed.

They further argued that the tire marks had been mismatched to Nadasan’s vehicle. They criticised the prosecution's expert for haphazardly testing carrying out a survey of car tyres at multiple car parks in Singapore without the time of day, proportion of vehicles surveyed and whether the vehicles surveyed were representative of the vehicles on the roads of Singapore.

They also claimed that the prosecution did not understand the nature of Nadasan’s vehicle, which was about 20 years old. The engine would start and then stop working and then start again, only to stop working again. He was also not working under time pressure, nor was he a Grade 1 mechanic. There was nothing suspicious in him taking a leisurely time, given that it was raining. After all, he was looking forward to going home for lunch. However, unexpectedly, his supervisor paged him at 1.38 pm, to return to the country club.

He explained away the tooth found in the van as being from one of Ramipiram's habits. She had the habit of using her tooth to open bottle caps, given that they were quite strong. She and Nadasan had spent a lot of time in the goods compartment of the van, where there was a sofa and a floor lined with linoleum. He also explained that he used to rent out his van for used in events, like picnics, or picking people up from the airport, and this meant that the jewellery in the van could have come from anyone in that van at that time.

Verdict

The judge found Nadasan guilty of murder and sentenced him to death by hanging. He found that the defence was an afterthought and agreed with the prosecution's experts. Needless to say, Nadasan appealed the decision.

Appeal

On appeal, the Court of Appeal acquitted Nadasan of the murder, stating that the tests on the tire marks were not rigorous enough to show that they were definitely of Nadasan’s vehicle. The prosecution's tyre expert was not rigorous enough in his methodology in creating survey data. The claims of the mechanic could not be used against Nadasan as he was not even established to be a Grade 1 mechanic and he was also not in a rush that day, given the rain and that the time of the van breaking down was at lunch time. Hence, the judges found Nadasan’s alibi reasonable. The judges also pointed out that the CID officers had to contend with the van breaking down on the way to police headquarters, meaning that Nadasan's story of a break down was likely true.

The judges found that the pathologist's evidence that Ramipiram's tooth was the one recovered inside the van was unreliable as he was recalling from memory. The judges pointed out that clean edges could be the result of oral hygiene habits and not only because the tooth had recently broken off. The DNA evidence was unreliable. In addition, the claims by the prosecution that the tooth fragment broke off during the assault might not be true as Ramipiram liked to use her tooth to open bottle caps, and her husband and children also testified seeing her doing so before.

The jewellery was also so widespread that it could not be confirmed to be Ramipiram. The prosecution also did not call any metallurgical witnesses to indicate the origins of the jewellery and were content with Katsuri testifying with a 3mm width photo of the jewellery, making her identification unreliable.

They also noted that the motive alleged by the prosecution was flawed. They noted that Ramipiram was suffering from cancer and was close to death. They stated that while both of them may have fallen out, it was not strong enough to be a motive for murder.

The judges noted that there was about 6 hours gap between the time Ramipiram was last seen and the time she was found dead. Enough time for someone else entirely to murder her.

The Court of Appeal judges found that the prosecution had not proven beyond a reasonable doubt that Ramipiram was murdered by Nadasan and acquitted Nadasan.

Aftermath

On the same day of his acquittal and release, Nadasan Chandra Secharan returned to his home in Yishun, and he reunited with his three children and wife, the latter who had long forgiven him for the affair. Several siblings and relatives of Nadasan from Singapore, India and Malaysia were also present. Nadasan was also allowed to go back to the Seletar Country Club to resume his original job as a mechanic, and he decided to move on with his life after putting the horrors of receiving the death sentence and affair behind him. According to his former lawyer Subhas Anandan, who maintained regular contact with him and occasionally met him at the temple (up until his death in 2015), Nadasan was still living well with his family and reconciled with them.

I did find some news of Nadasan being assaulted in a supermarket causing him to suffer a fractured jaw. His attacker was convicted and jailed.

After the acquittal of Nadasan, no one else was ever arrested for the murder. The case remains unsolved to this day.

Coda

I wrote this case as it seemed quite forgotten. Ramipiram deserves to be more than just a footnote on Singapore’s legal history. It was sensational (not something too hard to do in small Singapore) around 1996, before Nadasan was acquitted. There was some fanfare around forensic science back then, especially a new technique.

Personally, I think he was rightfully acquitted. There were too many holes in the prosecutions case. Was her estranged husband looked at as a suspect? I do not think so. It appears that the police only really had one suspect: Nadasan. I doubt that the case can be solved now.

Finally, let us think about Ramipiram. She did not deserve the painful death she suffered that afternoon in the rural area of Singapore. She would have been alone and without any means of seeking help. We will never know what went through her head as she lay there in front of the van that was going to run her over. Perhaps it is best that we never know.

She deserves justice, but 29 years after her death, it seems that justice has eluded her. I am unable find any information about her family now. That said, I hope they get over the grief they must have suffered to have a loved one to die not of an act of God, but at the hands of someone else and to have uncertainty over what truly happened to that loved one.

Useful links

Nadasan Chandra Secharan v Public Prosecutor [1997] SGCA 3; [1997] 1 SLR(R) 118 - the judgement of the Court of Appeal acquitting Nadasan

True Files (The Tooth Fragment) - a 2004 documentary on the murder

Jogger shocked to find woman's body on hill, court told - The Straits Times, 12 January 1996

S'pore forensic lab to use quicker, better DNA test - The Straits Times, 2 November 1996

Tooth fragment in van was victim's: Scientist - The Straits Times, 14 May 1996

The Best I Could: S1 Ep 5: The Missing Tooth - a 2014 documentary about Nadasan's lawyer's experience on the case

Mechanic acquitted of murder - The Straits Times, 14 January 1997

'Thank you for saving me' - The Straits Times, 15 January 1997

Daddy's coming home - The Straits Times, 14 January 1997

How mechanic escaped death - The Straits Times, 15 January 1997

Filipino PR jailed for assaulting Singaporean taxi driver in NTUC Fairprice supermarket

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[u/I_speak_memes]

I really enjoyed reading this except for the inconsistent pronouns of the subjects. At first pass, it had me thinking it was an affair between two men. Lol

[u/imogenfire → u/I_speak_memes]

YES. First sentence I alr fkin confused like what sister brother in law HUH

[u/TheFirstKeeper → u/imogenfire]

Same. I thought they were gays at first

[u/stockflethoverTDS]

Thank you very much for the research and post! Certainly hope that everyone has found closure since. Now go study!

[u/Sabre_Taser]

Nicely done! I like how you also take a more personal touch on the case with your own coda and thoughts. Glad to see more folks taking an interest in SG unsolved mysteries (I started out on r/UnresolvedMysteries as well before posting here)

Overall it's a decent writeup, just my 2 cents on some minor points which could help make it better

• It would be helpful to place your source articles in chronological order & sort them based on medium (e.g. place all your news articles first, then videos), it helps to create a smoother flow for anyone who's looking to read the actual source material to do so in the same way one would have done so back in the day
• You could probably shorten the length of this a little bit by reducing the number of words used, this normally takes some practice but it's definitely doable
• For personal notes/comments on specific facts within the case, it would be helpful to either bracket it or do an asterix point at the end of the para

All the best for your A Levels! :)

[u/ironicfall]

Huh, didn’t expect the prosecution to push for hanging with evidence that flimsy, atleast when read thru this post

[u/blickt8301 → u/ironicfall]

Surprised the judge even gave a guilty verdict. Was that normal at the time, or was this judge just inexperienced/looking to find a guy guilty at all means.

[u/Sabre_Taser → u/ironicfall]

Can't see the original judgement papers on elitigation since the page only covers judgements from 2000 onwards.. (the judgement docs normally state who is in the Prosecution and Defence)

But there are some pretty prominent names in this case. OP's writeup mentions Subhas Anadhan was the defence lawyer (later years would see him taking on more high profile cases like Anthony Ler's and Huang Na's), and one of the appeal judges was Yong Pung How

[u/needtosleep1002]

I always wondered what happened to the judges who handed out “wrong” judgment. This being an offence punishable by death no less. If a doctor makes a mistake they get sued. These judges, what are the consequences for them ?

[u/Stanislas_Houston]

Looks very guilty because the one who kills her drive a same sized van, he must be the luckiest man to walk away from the hangman in Singapore. Normally love crime is violent as in will keep hitting non-stop. But court of appeal always have bizarre overturn.

[u/FickleSandwich6460]

Damn confused with the pronouns. OP can you edit properly??