Mr Sakthivel Kumaravelu, 33, was a construction worker from Tamil Nadu, India.

Like others from his home town, he would head to Little India on Sunday and later catch a private bus in Tekka Lane back to his dormitory in Jalan Papan, Jurong.

Five days after the riot took place in Singapore, the COI was convened to understand what happened that night. Here are its findings.

It was raining that night, and Mr Sakthivel had boarded the bus drunk, the COI heard. The bus was driven by Mr Lee Kim Huat, and it would have taken Mr Sakthivel back to his dormitory in Jurong.

Several workers complained to the bus timekeeper, Madam Wong Geck Woon, that Mr Sakthivel had jumped the queue and was drunk.

Madam Wong knew he had to leave, as the bus was not allowed to ferry drunk passengers. She asked one of the foreign workers in the queue to tell Mr Sakthivel to disembark.

When Mr Sakthivel did not heed the request, she boarded the bus and saw that he had walked towards the back of the bus with his trousers around his knees. She told him to pull them up and alight.

Eventually, Mr Sakthivel complied…

and alighted from the vehicle.

Three more workers boarded the bus afterwards and Mr Lee began to drive off slowly down Tekka Lane towards Race Course Road.

About half a minute later, Mr Sakthivel reappeared in the bus’ camera view. He was walking next to the bus and looking in through the front door.

He had an umbrella and a plastic bag in his left hand, and was holding up his trousers with his right.

Mr Lee saw Mr Sakthivel but waved to him to indicate the bus was full.

Undeterred, Mr Sakthivel ran to catch up with the bus.

The COI report said that Mr Lee checked his left rear-view mirror before commencing the turn, but he could not see Mr Sakthivel as the worker was in his blind spot.

As the bus turned left onto Race Course Road, Mr Sakthivel placed his outstretched right hand on the moving vehicle.

He lost his balance and fell face down into the path of the front left wheel of the bus.

Although Mr Lee stopped the bus immediately, the front wheel had already gone over Mr Sakthivel’s head and torso, killing him instantly.

Mr Lee went to look under the bus to see what had happened.

A crowd of workers surrounded the vehicle when they realised a Tamil worker had been run over.

Some of the workers got upset and vented their anger by hitting the bus.

One worker in a chequered shirt, who would later be called the good samaritan by the media, ushered Mr Lee and Madam Wong back onto the bus and blocked the entrance with his body.

The shutting of the bus door enraged the crowd. The workers punched and kicked the vehicle. They also flung shoes, bottles, rubbish bins and even metal drain covers at the bus, shattering its windows and windscreen.

“Suddenly, someone threw a brick into the bus. I tried to dodge, but it hit my left eye and my contact lens fell out. There was a huge gash on my left eyebrow,” said Madam Wong.

Eventually, she took refuge in a space near the driver’s seat, while Mr Lee hid under a rubbish bin that had been flung into the bus.

Two workers managed to climb into the bus through a broken window.

One of the workers assaulted Madam Wong repeatedly on the head with a stick-like object, demanding to know where the bus driver was.

Unable to find Mr Lee, the workers left the bus.

All this was taking place while the police were arriving on the scene and trying to make sense of what was happening.

The police had received the first 999 call at 9.23pm, two minutes after the accident.

The Singapore Police Force’s (SPF) combined operations room informed the Rochor Neighbourhood Police Centre (NPC) and told the Singapore Civil Defence Force (SCDF) an ambulance was needed.

Two Traffic Police officers were sent to manage traffic disruptions.

The officers did not know what they were getting into, as the 999 call did not mention any concerns about violence.

From the COI report, it appeared that the first indication to the authorities that it was more than just a traffic accident came from Certis officers on duty near the site.

One of them saw hundreds of foreign workers surrounding the bus. He radioed Certis teams nearby for help with crowd control.

He also called the Kampong Java NPC, and the team leader there, Assistant Superintendent of Police (ASP) Jonathan Tang, volunteered to go to Little India.

ASP Tang, who was injured in the riot, played a critical role in responding to the situation.

He and his partner rushed to Little India after they received the alert.

At 9.39pm, an SCDF Red Rhino arrived. Its officers initially did not see the body, but they noticed Madam Wong in the bus. Two officers tried to speak to her.

About a minute later, ASP Tang arrived at the scene. He told police and Certis officers to form a human barrier around the bus to create space for the SCDF officers to pull Mr Sakthivel’s body out. All this time, objects were being hurled at the bus, hitting the officers.

While the SCDF officers were focused on rescuing Madam Wong, more police officers, some equipped with shields and helmets, arrived. ASP Tang directed them towards the bus to shield the SCDF officers, Mr Lee and Madam Wong as they emerged from the vehicle.

Mr Lee and Madam Wong got off the bus at 10.08pm. SCDF officers formed a protective circle around them, while police officers carrying shields formed a semicircle around the SCDF officers and pushed their way past the crowd.

When the mob saw Mr Lee and Madam Wong being protected, everything changed. The projectiles, previously aimed at the bus, were now being thrown at the party protecting the duo.

Between 10.20pm and 10.40pm, before the arrival of the Special Operations Command (SOC), or riot police, the protesters flipped over six vehicles and burned four of them.

Most of the destruction happened between 10.15pm and 10.45pm before the SOC team got to the site.

During this period, the riot centred around the bus accident site in Race Course Road near the shared junction with Tekka Lane and Kerbau Road.

It later spread across the length of Race Course Road, between the junctions of Bukit Timah Road and Hampshire Road.

Northumberland Road would also be affected.

It was Singapore’s worst major public order incident since the racial riots in the 1960s.

The Little India riot left 62 people injured and caused more than $530,000 in damage. Emergency vehicles, including police cars and ambulances, were flipped over and burned.

Senior Assistant Commissioner of Police Arthur Law, who was deputy commander of Central Division when he was at the scene, said that night was “surreal”.

He said there were some hundreds of workers gathered at the Hampshire Road and Race Course Road junction when he arrived. “I saw many workers making a lot of noise, but I couldn't really make out what they were shouting.”

That night, I saw cars being overturned, they were being torched. It was nothing that I had encountered before.

He added that before that night, he had gone for overseas training attachments and had been exposed to tactics to deal with public disorder.

Read more about his story here.

At 10.35pm, some SOC troops in their vehicles found their way blocked near Kampong Java Road and made a U-turn to go back down Bukit Timah Road.

Others alighted from their vehicles in Hampshire Road and when the rioters saw these troopers in full riot gear and holding shields, they fled.

The SOC team was finally at the scene in force at about 10.50pm. As the troops marched towards the mob, several rioters surrendered.

Elsewhere, around Little India, police officers continued rounding up troublemakers. The crowd thinned.

Incredibly, nobody died during the rioting.

No shots were fired, and the police did not use tear gas or water cannons.

There were also no reports of looting or arson of private property.

And no Singaporean was involved in the riot.

A total of 240 police officers and 56 SCDF personnel were deployed that night.

In all, 37 police officers, 12 SCDF personnel, five Certis officers, and eight members of the public were injured.

The rioters damaged 14 police and eight SCDF vehicles, a private ambulance, six private vehicles, and the accident bus.

After cleanup operations, Race Course Road was reopened to traffic at 6.45am the next day.

Mr Lee, who was later cleared of any wrongdoing over the accident, had been blamed by the rioters for Mr Sakthivel’s death.

The COI noted that when first responders arrived, the foreign workers had expected officers to arrest and handcuff Mr Lee and Madam Wong.

Instead, they saw officers shielding them. This could have infuriated them further, the COI said.

There were rumours Mr Sakthivel did not die immediately and was left crying for help beneath the bus. Another rumour was that Madam Wong had pushed him off the vehicle.

There were even claims that first responders had kicked and disrespected his body.

All were untrue.

At the beginning of the riot, ASP Tang and SCDF's Lieutenant (Lt) Tiffany Neo were the highest-ranking officers present. But because of the chaos, many officers did not know who was in charge.

And it did not help that several high-ranking police officers arrived later in plain clothes.

Many officers found they could not call for reinforcements or notify colleagues of where the rioters were located.

ASP Tang tried contacting one of the ops rooms but found he could not use his radio as it was too noisy. The radio sets were also jammed with too many messages sent over the same frequencies.

He tried calling on the phone but could not get through. The ops room was also unable to contact him on the radio.

Luckily, at 9.45pm, one of the ops rooms called ASP Tang who asked for the riot police to be activated.

The jammed radio sets also resulted in a delay of the SOC’s arrival, as nobody could tell the SOC tactical troops which was the fastest route to the scene.

That caused them to make a U-turn in Bukit Timah Road, resulting in another 15-minute delay due to heavy traffic and multiple traffic junctions along the way.

Lt Neo showed her mettle under pressure.

After extricating Mr Sakthivel’s body, standard protocol stated that in fatal incidents, SCDF should hand the body over to the police.

But seeing police officers struggling to contain the crowd, Lt Neo told her team to cover the body with two blankets as it was in a gruesome state, and to move it elsewhere.

As the SCDF officers were carrying it on a stretcher to an ambulance in front of the bus, police officers tried to protect them. A foreign worker attempted to pull the blankets off the body.

As Lt Neo pushed him off, someone hit her twice in the back. She did not even turn to see who assaulted her.

When they finally reached the ambulance, several injured officers were already there receiving treatment from a paramedic.

The ambulance driver initially did not allow the body to be placed inside his vehicle, as it was against protocol to do so.

But Lt Neo overruled him as they were being pelted by objects. The body was placed inside the ambulance.

Though the scar on her left eyebrow is hardly visible now, Madam Wong still has psychological scars. She is now a bus attendant to schoolchildren.

In August 2023, she went to Little India for the first time in a decade. It was her first time exiting Little India MRT station in 10 years.

When I take a train or a bus, and it passes Little India, I’ll get nervous. Or when the doors open as the train stops at Little India and people come flooding in, I’ll tense up.

Read more about her story here.

One visible change is the construction of two new bus terminals. Before the riot, workers lined up in an open field dotted with trees.

Mr S. Anand, a resident of Block 668 Chander Road, said the improvements after the riot were clearly visible to residents who are happier.

Previously, there were no proper places for buses to drop off passengers from dormitories, or areas for people to sit or stand. So most just sat in groups at a field near Tekka Lane, said Mr Anand who used to sell briyani rice at a shop near Kerbau Road.

One of the two bus terminals is in Hampshire Road, and the other, Tekka Lane. The bus terminals have fans. The surrounding areas are also paved, providing a better environment for foreign workers waiting for buses.

Construction is also under way to expand the Little India Bus Terminal along Tekka Lane, which is expected to be completed in the fourth quarter of 2024, according to the Land Transport Authority. Bus services now end at 9pm instead of 11pm.

Within Little India itself, there has been a stark increase in surveillance. In 2020, then Senior Parliamentary Secretary for Home Affairs Amrin Amin said the number of police cameras deployed in the district has risen from 34 in 2016 to about 200 in April 2020.

Signs of police surveillance can be seen all around Little India.

Mr Subramani Purushothaman, 57, who has been living in Block 661 Buffalo Road for 20 years, said he has noticed the increased police presence in the area. For example, he has seen auxiliary police confronting migrant workers drinking in the open – their photos were taken and the drinks were emptied into rubbish bins. The workers were also told to leave.

In 2015, a year after the inquiry, a designated Liquor Control Zone was implemented, prohibiting the consumption of alcohol from 7am on Saturday to 7am on Monday.

The ban under the Liquor Control (Supply and Consumption) Act also applies from 7pm on the eve of a public holiday to 7am on the day after the public holiday. On weekdays, consumption of alcohol is prohibited from 10.30pm to 7am.

Shops in Little India and Geylang are not allowed to sell takeaway alcohol from 7pm on weekends, on the eve of public holidays, and on public holidays.

This move came after a temporary ban on the sale and consumption of alcohol in Little India on the weekend of Dec 14 and 15 immediately after the riot. The ban was then extended for six months until June 24, 2014, and has been in effect since.

“Overnight, Little India became quiet and clean,” said Mr Anand.