Domestic worker found guilty of murdering elderly Indian in Singapore

Singapore, May 19 (IANS) A domestic worker from Myanmar who stabbed her employer's Indian mother-in-law 26 times in 2018, has been found guilty of murder in Singapore, a media report said.

Zin Mar Nwe, 22, who came to work in Singapore in January 2018, took the extreme step after the 70-year-old woman abused and threatened to send her back to Myanmar, The Straits Times reported on Thursday.

On June 25, 2018, the two women were alone in the flat when Zin grabbed a knife from the kitchen and stabbed the victim multiple times.

She then left with some cash and went to her agency to ask for her passport, where she was arrested after a few hours.

After her arrest, the maid initially denied stabbing the victim but later admitted, according to the report.

Zin said she was physically abused by the victim, and in one of her statements to the police on July 1, 2018, she listed numerous instances of how the victim abused her.

She added the victim came to stay with her employer's family on May 26, 2018, and would use her knuckles to knock Zin on her head or back whenever she did not understand what the victim wanted her to do.

Zin said on one occasion, while she was massaging the victim, the victim slapped her because she found the massage painful.

The purported trigger point was when the victim told Zin that she would be sent back to the agent the next day, which would mean going back to her native country in debt.

The High Court accepted on Thursday that the victim had abused Zin to get her attention or reprimand her.

"I do not believe that the accused would have stabbed the deceased if there were just an isolated statement by the deceased, on the day in question, that the accused would be sent back to the agent," Justice Andre Maniam was cited as saying by The Straits Times.

"But for the threat to send the accused back to the agent, however, the accused would not have stabbed the deceased," added Justice Maniam.

Zin's lawyer argued that she should be convicted of culpable homicide, relying on the opinion of Dr. Tommy Tan that the maid was suffering from adjustment disorder with mixed anxiety and depressed mood at the time.

Justice Maniam did not accept Dr. Tan's opinion that the maid was in a "dissociative state" at the time of the stabbing.

He found that the maid was conscious that she was stabbing the victim, noting that she could remember details of the stabbing, and was able to describe the stabbing to the police.

The case has been adjourned to a later date for sentencing.

Zin faces the death penalty or life imprisonment, but according to the prosecution, it is not seeking a death sentence.

The victim and her family members could not be named due to a gag order as one of the witnesses in the trial is below 18 years.