Fatal Myanmar maid abuse: Plans to send victim home in Aug 2016, one month before she died

The woman and her mother who were convicted of fatally abusing a maid were planning to terminate her contract and send her back home to Myanmar in August 2016, one month before the domestic helper died.

Prema S. Naraynasamy, 64, told the court on Wednesday that the work performance of the maid Piang Ngaih Don had stressed her daughter Gaiyathiri Murugayan to the point that she wanted to jump off a building with her two children.

Gaiyathiri’s ex-husband Kevin Chelvam was also aware of the situation, said Prema.

On Wednesday – the seventh anniversary of the death of Ms Piang Ngaih Don – Prema returned to court to testify in the trial for Chelvam.

Chelvam, a 40-year-old police staff sergeant who has been suspended, is claiming trial to four charges. These include voluntarily causing hurt and abetment of voluntarily causing grievous hurt to Ms Piang Ngaih Don by starvation, and removing evidence of the abuse in the form of a closed-circuit television (CCTV) recorder.

Chelvam and Gaiyathiri divorced in 2020 and have two children, aged one and four at the time.

Ms Piang Ngaih Don, who was from Myanmar, started working for Chelvam’s family in May 2015 and died on July 26 the following year after prolonged abuse while under his employment.

Prema said Gaiyathiri had issues with Ms Piang Ngaih Don as early as in September 2015, after Chelvam’s lawyer Pratap Kishan highlighted a message sent by Gaiyathiri that suggested so.

Prema said she could not remember when Gaiyathiri said she was facing the mental torture, but that it would happen quite often.

Prema said: “With the maid she (Gaiyathiri) felt like she was going to go crazy. She felt very stressed. She (the maid) never did anything properly.”

She said she and her daughter would have to repeat instructions several times and that Ms Piang Ngaih Don would take several hours to finish a task.

Prema appeared in court in a purple jumpsuit, wearing handcuffs, spectacles and a mask. Her hair was at shoulder length and had white streaks. She spoke in Tamil via a translator whom she kept her gaze on during most of the proceedings.

Prema said she had taken Ms Piang Ngaih Don to her son’s flat in Hougang on multiple occasions to relieve her daughter of the stress allegedly caused by the maid. On one occasion, this visit lasted for a week.

Following this, Prema and Gaiyathiri decided to send Ms Piang Ngaih Don home, with Prema saying that they should not hire another maid, given the trouble they had allegedly faced with Ms Piang Ngaih Don.

According to Prema, Gaiyathiri made Ms Piang Ngaih Don call her sister in Myanmar to inform her of this. Prema told the court that she was unaware if any arrangements had been made for this.

Prema added that Ms Piang Ngaih Don said she did not want to go home. In response, Prema told the maid to go back home and see a doctor as she was eating a lot and was still losing a lot of weight, and that doctors in Singapore were expensive.

Prema said that Ms Piang Ngaih Don finally agreed, adding that she could not recall when she had the conversation with her but it was the time when the maid got really thin.

Based on her observation, she said Ms Piang Ngaih Don would eat well and that she was a good eater.

Prema said that when she and Ms Piang Ngaih Don went out for meals together she would buy roti prata for the maid, and that she would get chicken briyani with extra rice for her and that she would finish her meal.

Prema said they would not control the portion of what Ms Piang Ngaih Don ate, and that she would eat the same food as the rest of the family.

The maid weighed 39kg when she started working for Chelvam’s family and was a mere 24kg when she died at the age of 24. A senior consultant forensic pathologist said on Monday her body mass index after she died was similar to someone suffering from advanced cancer or from extensive and widespread tuberculosis.

Gaiyathiri, 43, was sentenced in June 2021 to 30 years in prison – the longest jail term meted out in a maid abuse case in Singapore.

Prema who joined her daughter in the abuse was sentenced to 14 years’ jail in January. She was given three more years’ jail in June after admitting to one charge of instigating Chelvam to cause evidence of the offences in their Bishan flat to disappear, bringing her total jail term to 17 years.

She told the court that her relationship with Chelvam at the time of the abuse was like mother and son, in response to a question from Mr Pratap.

Prema said that between January and July 2016 she would normally stay at Chelvam and Gaiyathiri’s Bishan flat two or three days a week, from Tuesday afternoon to Friday afternoon. On rare occasions she would do so for longer.

“I mostly stayed to take care of the children, but I also felt the maid was giving Gaiyathiri a lot of issues,” she said, adding that Gaiyathiri was also not feeling very well at this time.

Prema said Gaiyathiri had trouble sleeping as her children would usually cry at night. She added that her daughter would take at least 10 to 12 Panadol Extra caplets a day and complained of migraine.

When Mr Pratap asked how her interaction was with Ms Piang Ngaih Don in 2016, Prema said they were quite close and would go out and have breakfast and buy groceries.

“Your Honour, myself and her, we were close. When she made a mistake, I would get really angry. Usually I am not like that, your Honour, I am not that kind of person. Whenever she did any wrong, it made me really angry.”

The trial continues on Wednesday.