PLOTTERS: Aniza Essa (above) and her teenage lover Muhammad Nasir Abdul Aziz, who is accused of killing her spouse last year.

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Yesterday, Aniza Essa, 25, who initially faced the gallows for helping the teenager to commit murder, was jailed for nine years after pleading guilty to a lesser charge.

The charge was reduced from murder to manslaughter because a psychiatrist found that she had suffered a moderate depressive episode which impaired her responsibility for the offence.

The teenager, Muhammad Nasir Abdul Aziz, now 17, remains accused of murder.

Prosecutors called the killing 'cold-blooded' and wanted Aniza jailed for life. But Justice Chan Seng Onn was not persuaded, though he stressed the gravity of her crime.

In sentencing her, he said: 'This is another one of those sad and unfortunate cases which come before the court.'

He told Aniza: 'I note that you psychologically manipulated a young, 16-year-old boy and instigated him to kill your husband.'

He noted that she had had many opportunities to stop the crime, but did not.

'It appears that you were the cause of all that has happened,' he told her. He hoped that she would be a good mother to her two sons - aged two and five - after her release.

Aniza wept on hearing the sentence.

The bloodied body of her husband, 29-year-old disc jockey Manap Sarlip, was found in front of their 16th-floor flat at Whampoa Drive last July 1.

The court heard that Mr Manap could not get a stable job and the couple often fought over money.

Aniza worked as a pub waitress and hostess. Nasir was initially a patron but started working there as a bartender in February last year, and the two began an affair.

By June, she was plotting to get rid of her husband.

When Nasir suggested that she should get divorced, she brushed it off, saying Mr Manap would not agree.

She said she had a former boyfriend who was willing to kill her husband and marry her. She told Nasir they would have to end their affair if her old flame succeeded.

Afraid of losing her, the teenager agreed to kill Mr Manap.

The court heard that he had tried twice but failed. Each time she expressed disappointment and threatened to have her ex-boyfriend do the job, which would mean ending the affair with Nasir.

Each time the boy begged for one more chance. She promised to stay with him all her life and love him more if he pulled off the killing.

He succeeded on the third attempt, the court heard.

Aniza confessed to the police that she was in the flat on July 1, while Nasir waited in ambush outside for her husband.

Mr Manap was stabbed nine times, and bled to death from a chest wound.

Yesterday, defence counsel N. M. Marican painted a picture of Aniza as an abused wife who had been beaten regularly over money. He argued that she had played only a minor role in the killing.

But Deputy Public Prosecutor Tan Kiat Pheng argued that she had taken the law into her own hands instead of going to the police or the Family Court for protection.

She had exploited Nasir's feelings and his willingness to do anything to please her and keep their relationship alive.

Referring to the similar circumstances of the sensational Annie Leong murder in 2001, the DPP likened Nasir to the naive 15-year-old boy who was convicted of killing Madam Leong on the instructions of her estranged husband Anthony Ler. The latter was later convicted and hanged.

Nasir is expected to go on trial next week.

Although murder carries the mandatory death sentence, Nasir faces an indefinite stay behind bars if convicted because he was under 18 at the time, like the 15-year-old boy who killed Madam Leong.

The Straits Times understands that Aniza's children are in a welfare home.

selinal@sph.com.sg