SHAH ALAM, May 23 (Bernama) -- The High Court Thursday found guilty all the four accused in the murder of cosmetics millionairess Datuk Sosilawati Lawiya and three others three years ago, and sentenced them to death by hanging.
Judge Datuk Akhtar Tahir said he was satisfied that the defence had failed to raise a reasonable doubt in the prosecution's case against former lawyer N. Pathmanabhan and his three farm workers, T. Thilaiyalagan, R. Matan and R. Kathavarayan.
Pathmanabhan, 43, Thilaiyalagan, 21, Matan, 22, and Kathavarayan, 33, were charged with the murder of Sosilawati, 47, bank officer Noorhisham Mohamad, 38, lawyer Ahmad Kamil Abdul Karim, 32, and Sosilawati's driver Kamaruddin Shamsuddin, 44, at Lot 2001, Jalan Tanjong Layang, Tanjung Sepat, in Banting between 8.30 pm and 9.45 pm on Aug 30, 2010.
They were charged under Section 302 of the Penal Code, read with Section 34 of the same code, which provides for the mandatory death sentence upon conviction.
Deputy Public Prosecutors Ishak Mohd Yusoff, Saiful Edris Zainuddin and Idham Abd Ghani appeared for the prosecution while Pathmanabhan was represented by counsel Manjeet Singh Dhillon and Pushpa Ratnam; Thilaiyalagan, by Gurbachan Singh; Matan, by Amer Hamzah Arshad and Kathavarayan, by Hasshahari Johari Mawi.
In his judgement, Judge Akhtar concluded that land matters figured as the key motive in the murder of Sosilawati.
He said he had mentioned during the prosecution's case that a probable motive and reason to kill Sosilawati was the inability of the first accused, Pathmanabhan, to honour the cheque issued to Sosilawati.
However, after considering the testimony of Pathmanabhan, he found that there could be other more cogent reasons which were unwittingly spilled out by Pathmanabhan himself in his testimony, that is land matters, he said.
Akhtar said Pathmanabhan gave evidence on two land deals in which he was involved and had acted for two opposing sides on the same matter as well as having acquired an interest in the transactions and that these actions were not only unethical but had also compromised his impartiality.
He said Pathmanabhan had appeared for both Sosilawati and former Sementa state assemblyman Datuk Abdul Rahman Palil in the same deal and, by doing so, was caught between the 'devil and the deep blue sea'.
"On one hand was Sosilawati, a well-known entrepreneur, and on the other was Rahman Palil, in the word of the first accused, a powerful politician. In fact, it was the testimony of the first accused that he was reluctant to organise a meeting involving both of them when requested for such a meeting.
"When pushed to the corner, as what happened to the first accused in this case, he took the easy route of eliminating one of these persons and, unfortunately, it happened to be Sosilawati. The rest of the persons accompanying Sosilawati were just at the wrong place at the wrong time," he said in his 15-page written judgment.
Recapitulating the evidence in the prosecution's case, Akhtar said the intended destination of Sosilawati around noon of Aug 30, 2010, as told to family members, was to meet Pathmanabhan for the purposes of bringing forward the payment of two cheques issued by the lawyer's firm, and the prosecution then, through telecommunication records, charted the journey of Sosilawati and company to Banting where the final location of the journey, according to the records, was a farm which was later proved to belong to Pathmanabhan.
He said the prosecution further sought to prove that Sosilawati and company were in fact on the farm by introducing the evidence of a maid working at the farm, Siti Hamidah Karnax, (a prosecution witness) who saw a woman and three men entering the farm.
Akhtar said further evidence from the family members showed that Sosilawati and company had failed to return from Banting and were also not responding to phone calls.
He said that as it was not normal for Sosilawati and company not to inform family members of their whereabouts, the family members were concerned as to what had happened to them and this concern prompted them to lodge police reports.
He said that acting upon this report and in carrying out further investigations, the police zeroed in on to the farm belonging to Pathmanabhan and arrested five people including the second accused, Thilaiyalagan, and fourth accused, Kathavarayan, on Sept 9, 2010.
He said initial investigations at the farm did not reveal anything incriminating or tangible, but the breakthrough came on Sept 12, 2010 when, based on the information given by three of the arrested persons including Thilaiyalagan and Kathavarayan, the police revisited the farm.
On this occasion, based on the information given, especially by Thilaiyalagan and Kathavarayan, Akhtar said, the police discovered a burnt patch at the back of the farm and, on digging the burnt spot, the police unearthed bones whereby some of the bones were later confirmed by the expert to be human bones that were charred, showing they had been burnt to a very high degree of temperature.
He said further investigations at the farm revealed an area with the presence of blood spots and a cricket bat with traces of blood and an analysis of the blood by the chemist showed that the blood matched that of some members of Sosilawati and company.
Akhtar said an inference could be drawn from these facts that something untoward had happened to Sosilawati and company on the farm and this fact was bolstered by the evidence of witness Siti Hamidah that she had heard a woman's screams on Aug 30, 2010, at the farm as well having seen a fire as high as the neighbouring oil palm trees.
He said the second and fourth accused gave information which led the police to various spots in Banting as well as the area in Subang Jaya where they found the cars in which Sosilawati and company had gone to Banting to meet Pathmanabhan, the handphones and watches identified by family members to belong to some members of Sosilawati and company, the discovery of burnt logs and burnt zinc sheets, some of which bore traces of blood.
"The blood found on the zinc sheets matched (that of) a member of Sosilawati and company. The presence of logs at the farm was also alluded to by Siti Hamidah when she saw the farm hands, including the third accused Matan, unloading the logs a day earlier," he said.
On the hints by the counsel that he might have been influenced in calling for the defence of the four accused because of the media hype surrounding this case, Akhtar said a judge, in deciding a matter, faces more danger of influence from an eloquent defence counsel or a relentless prosecutor and both skillfully divert the court's attention to factors which favour them but blissfully ignore the factors that go against their case or theory.
"In my mind, a judge has to be equally wary of the eloquent lawyer and a relentless prosecutor as he has to be wary of the media. The judge's focus should be always towards the entire evidence adduced in the case and nothing else. I must also add (that) the judge should not be influenced by emotion or personal glory in deciding a case and I decided this case with these precautions in mind," he said.
In evaluating the defence evidence, the judge said, Pathmanabhan denied having met Sosilawati on the night or evening of Aug 30, 2010, at the farm or anywhere else and therefore distanced himself from whatever had befallen them, and this portion of the evidence was supported by the evidence of Thilaiyalagan and Matan who also contended that nothing untoward happened on the night of Aug 30, 2010, or the next day.
Akhtar said that to him, Pathmanabhan's denial of having met Sosilawati on Aug 30, 2010, ran counter to the evidence of Sosilawati's daughter that she was specifically informed by Sosilawati that she was going to Banting to meet Pathmanabhan over the clearance of the two cheques.
He said the issuance of the two cheques was not denied by Pathmanabhan and the tendering of the two cheques supported their existence.
Furthermore, he said, Sosilawati's daughter had no axe to grind with Pathmanabhan or the other accused for her wanting to lie on this matter, and the other undisputed fact was that Sosilawati had gone to Banting with her driver.
"Similarly, the other family members had nothing to hide in testifying that their husbands had followed Sosilawati as a call of their duty. It is again undisputed that the lawyer and banker had often acted as advisors of Sosilawati.
For them to follow Sosilawati to Banting is again not implausible and, in fact, has been proven by the various telephone conversations they had with their family members during the journey.
"In the face of unblemished evidence of the family members, my decision remains intact even after hearing the defence that the sole reason Sosilawati and company had gone to Banting was to meet Pathmanabhan. The names thrown by the defence of Abdul Rahman Palil and the others who were known to Sosilawati were mere red herrings. Further, the fact that these names were not even called as witnesses shows that they had no role to play in this case and, similarly, they were not called by the defence," he said.
Akhtar also said that he did believe the portion of the evidence of fourth accused Kathavarayan that Sosilawati and company did come to the farm on Aug 30, 2010, and did meet Pathmanabhan although he was aware that there might have been a fallout between Kathavarayan and Pathmanabhan.
He said all the accused also could offer no explanation of the items belonging to Sosilawati and company being found as a result of the information of the four arrested persons and the defence also offered no new explanation why the information should not be used against the accused apart from repeating earlier allegation of force being used on them.
"I will stress here that the police could not have recovered at the sites on their own without being led to their discovery by the informants. The knowledge of the second and fourth accused as to the items recovered shows that the items were in their possession prior to them being disposed.
"The items of Sosilawati and company being in the possession of the second and fourth accused raise the only logical inference, that they were obtained from Sosilawati and company and were obtained by force.
"No explanation was given by the accused as to the finding of the blood and human bones on the farm, again a feeble attempt was made to challenge the DNA evidence. There is no reason for me to discard the evidence of the experts which I had accepted earlier especially since the defence did not bring any other expert evidence to the contrary.
"Again, the finding of blood and charred human bones on the farm raises the only possible inference as to what could have happened to Sosilawati and company when they were on the farm, that is, they were burnt to death," he said.
Furthermore, Akhtar said, the fourth accused was not convincing when he testified that he had seen Sosilawati a week later when he was with Pathmanabhan because, when he was being questioned by the DPP on the identity of the woman he saw, the fourth accused appeared fidgety and evasive.
He said that if Kathavarayan had really seen Sosilawati alive, that would be the first thing he would have revealed to the police instead of bringing them to places to recover items belonging to Sosilawati and company, and by suddenly saying that Sosilawati was alive he hoped to divert these proceedings to another direction.
On the record of proceedings of the two prosecution witnesses, U. Suresh who had earlier pleaded guilty to disposing the ashes of Sosilawati and company and K. Sarawanan who had pleaded guilty to burning the bodies of the four victims, Akhtar said the magistrate's court proceedings showed that both witnesses had pleaded guilty and admitted to the facts voluntarily contrary to what they claimed before the court that they were forced to do so.
He therefore ruled that in the light of these contradictions in their conduct at two different forums, their evidence in this trial was not worthy of credit. Suresh, 29, and Sarawanan, 22, are now serving 20 years' imprisonment in the Sungai Udang Prison in Melaka.
--BERNAMA
