Court dismisses mum's last-minute bid to halt drug trafficker's execution

The mother of Malaysian drug trafficker Nagaenthran K. Dharmalingam yesterday failed in an eleventh-hour attempt to halt his rescheduled execution, which is due to be carried out today.

Her application was dismissed by the Court of Appeal, comprising Justices Andrew Phang, Judith Prakash and Belinda Ang.

Justice Phang said the application was patently devoid of factual and legal merit, and was a clear continuation of tactics to "drip-feed" applications to prevent the sentence from being carried out.

The attempt came nearly a month after a five-judge Court of Appeal, led by Chief Justice Sundaresh Menon, on March 29 rejected Nagaenthran's last-ditch bid to challenge his death sentence, calling it a blatant and egregious abuse of the court's processes.

Nagaenthran was convicted of trafficking 42.72g of heroin in 2010 and given the mandatory death penalty. He has exhausted his rights of appeal and was first scheduled to be hanged on Nov 10 last year.

After his mother's application was dismissed, the court granted Nagaenthran two hours to spend with his family members.

Earlier yesterday, Madam Panchalai Supermaniam said in a packed courtroom through a Tamil interpreter: "I want my son back alive, Your Honour."

She said that she needed time to get a lawyer.

Court papers filed on behalf of mother and son on Monday contended that Chief Justice Menon, in presiding over Nagaenthran's appeal, had "fundamentally breached" Nagaenthran's constitutional right to a fair trial and that this gave rise to a "reasonable apprehension of bias".

This argument was premised on the fact that Chief Justice Menon was the serving attorney-general when Nagaenthran was convicted and had his sentence upheld on appeal.

Deputy Public Prosecutor Wong Woon Kwong said this argument was baseless and conveniently omitted the fact that Nagaenthran and his previous lawyers had no objections to Chief Justice Menon presiding over the case.

The prosecutor said Chief Justice Menon's tenure as Attorney-General had specifically been brought to the defence's attention.

He added that Chief Justice Menon was not involved in the decisions relating to Nagaenthran's prosecution.

Justice Phang said although Madam Panchalai said she had no legal help, the court papers were clearly drafted by a lawyer.

The judge said the allegation that Nagaenthran had been denied a fair trial was an afterthought.

Nagaenthran has had more than five years to raise this concern, as Chief Justice Menon first heard an application he filed in December 2016, he said.

In March, Nagaenthran's lawyers claimed he was mentally disabled but the court found no admissible evidence to support this.