On the morning of 5 August 2002, a six-month-old Indonesian baby girl named Anjeli Elisaputri was found dead inside the rubbish chute of one of the HDB blocks at Hougang, Singapore.
[8] In April 2002, when the baby was about three months old, Widiyarti and her child travelled to Singapore, where she was reunited with Jalil, who was then released on a special pass after he finished serving his sentence for his immigration offence.
Later, police corporal Siti Nurhayatni was approached by a desperate Widiyarti, who hysterically asked her for help and telling her that her baby was missing and allegedly taken away by Soosainathan.
At the flat, police reinforcements, including Station Inspector (SI) R Venubalan, arrived and they asked Soosainathan to unlock the door.
Inside the rubbish chute, the police officers managed to find the corpse of Anjeli, wrapped in a brown bed sheet and her limbs tied up.
Dr Lau also revealed that the hymen of the baby was torn, and there were bruises on the vaginal area and other parts of the body, which suggested that Anjeli was raped before she was killed.
[22][23][24] Dr Lau disagreed with Anandan's assertion that these injuries resulted from Widiyarti used too much force when rubbing her finger over Anjeli's private parts while showering instead of sexual assault.
In fact, Soosainathan had protested his innocence in the police statements, and claimed that on the night before the murder, he was awakened during his sleep and saw both Widiyarti and Jalil took the baby away while he was on the bed, which effectively fingered them as the ones who may have killed the child.
Furthermore, Sosainathan even asserted it was the police that messed up the crime scene, and Widiyarti may have planted the bloodstained pillow into his bedroom, so as to direct the blame to him.
The prosecution, in rebuttal, argued that Soosainathan was the one who killed Anjeli in light of the circumstantial evidence and his account about someone else taking away the girl was not true, and therefore sought a guilty verdict of murder.
Thirdly, the sexual injuries found on the baby was clear inference to the possibility that Soosainathan was responsible for the alleged rape of Anjeli.
[32][33][34] On 22 September 2003, two months after Soosainathan received the death penalty for murdering Anjeli, the Court of Appeal's three-judge panel - consisting of Chao Hick Tin, Lai Kew Chai and Chief Justice Yong Pung How - rejected his appeal against the conviction and sentence, on the basis that the circumstantial evidence was strong enough to lead to the "irresistible conclusion" that Soosainathan was responsible for the rape and murder of the baby.
[35][36][37] On 21 May 2004, one year and nine months after the rape and murder of Anjeli Elisaputri, 42-year-old Soosainathan Dass Saminathan was hanged in Changi Prison at dawn.
Anandan, who said he was not paid much for the case, stated that he felt that no matter how heinous his client's crime was, he still deserved a right to a fair trial and representation by counsel during the course of the proceedings.