On 25 November 2016, at Tanah Merah Ferry Terminal, Singapore, during a heated argument, Ahmad Muin bin Yaacob, a 23-year-old Malaysian cleaner, killed his 54-year-old supervisor Maimunah binte Awang by stabbing her with a pair of grass cutters and bludgeoning her on the head repeatedly.

He stole Maimunah's jewellery and abandoned her body in a drain before he fled back to his hometown in Pasir Puteh, Kelantan, Malaysia.

[1] On 25 November 2016, the corpse of a woman was discovered abandoned in the canal with a depth of 1.8m at Tanah Merah Ferry Terminal.

The cleaner was 23-year-old Ahmad Muin Yaacob, a Malaysian who came from Kelantan to Singapore since October 2016 on a temporary work permit.

According to the cleaners, Ahmad was said to have been retrenched from work and had to return to Malaysia, and he was stressed as he was in dire need for money to afford his wedding expenses.

[11][12] Two days after his arrival, on 21 December 2016, Ahmad was officially charged with murder at the State Courts of Singapore, and remanded for police investigations.

[15] Upon his arrest and being brought into custody of the Singapore authorities, Ahmad Muin Yaacob broke down during police interrogations and confessed out of guilt that he killed Maimunah Awang.

Ahmad, who was born in 1993 at Kelantan and the seventh of eleven children in his family,[16] told the police that he was engaged to an unnamed woman and due to marry her on 9 December 2016, ten days before his arrest.

His wedding took place as usual on 9 December 2016, and barely nine days after he got married, 23-year-old Ahmad Muin bin Yaacob was finally arrested for murdering 54-year-old Maimunah binte Awang.

[21] On 17 September 2019, three years after the killing of Maimunah binte Awang, the trial of 26-year-old Ahmad Muin bin Yaacob first took place at the High Court.

By then, Ahmad's defence counsel were replaced by Eugene Thuraisingam, a leading criminal lawyer who took over the case with his law firm's two colleagues Johannes Hadi and Chooi Jing Yen.

[26][27] Two members from the prosecution - Selena Yap and Kumaresan Gohulabalan - argued that Ahmad should be subjected to the maximum of 24 strokes of the cane.

They also stated that the crime happened not out of cold blood, but during a heated argument that resulted in Ahmad going physical and killing Maimunah, an act which was not planned or premeditated beforehand.

Another one of Maimunah's daughters also told The Straits Times that the loss of their mother was huge and hard for them to accept at the initial stage.

[35] In 2023, Singaporean Tamil-language crime show Theerpugal (translated as "The Verdict" in Tamil) re-enacted the Tanah Merah Ferry Terminal murder.