Malaysian Nagaenthran K. Dharmalingam has been executed in Singapore this morning.

Reuters quoted his brother Navin Kumar confirming the execution, and saying that the funeral would be held in Ipoh, Perak.

Yesterday, the deceased's family failed in their last-ditch attempt to set aside the 34-year-old's conviction and death sentence, at the Singapore Court of Appeal.

The family had mounted the eleventh hour bid on the basis that judge Sundaresh Menon, who presided over and dismissed Nagaenthran's appeals, was earlier the attorney-general who had prosecuted Nagaenthran and secured his conviction.

After the dismissal of the appeal, the court allowed Nagaenthran to hold hands with his family members present in the courtroom, reported Free Malaysia Today.

Nagaenthran had been in the death row in Singapore since 2010 for smuggling 42.7hm of heroin into the city-state, a year earlier.

During the trial, a Singapore government psychiatrist had declared that Nagaenthran was intellectually challenged with an IQ of 69, but the court has pressed on with the execution, saying that it has not found him to be "substantially impaired", and that he knew fully well he was carrying out an illegal act.

Nagaenthran was supposed to have been hanged on Nov 10 last year, but the court offered a temporary reprieve after the inmate tested positive for COVID-19.

Earlier, Malaysian Prime Minister Ismail Sabri Yaakob had also written to his Singapore counterpart, seeking leniency for Nagaenthran.

Nagaenthran's case also attracted international attention, with British billionaire Richard Branson and actor Stephen Fry asking Singapore to spare the inmate's life.

On Dec 3 last year, Singapore President Halimah Yacob said that Nagaenthran had been accorded "full due process" under the law.


Source: FMT, Reuters
Photo source: Reuters, Al-Jazeera