On 30 August 2010, in Banting, Selangor, Malaysia, 47-year-old cosmetics millionaire Datuk Sosilawati Lawiya and her three companions – bank officer Noorhisham Mohamad, lawyer Ahmad Kamil Abdul Karim, and her driver Kamaruddin Shamsuddin – had all went missing.

Pathmanabhan and his three farm hands – T. Thilaiyalagan, R. Matan and R. Kathavarayan (also spelt R. Khatavarayan) – were all arrested and charged with murder based on circumstantial evidence and without the bodies of the victims in this case.

A long-drawn appeal process ended in March 2017, with the Federal Court confirming the death sentences of Pathmanabhan, Thilaiyagan, and Kathavarayan but released Matan after citing insufficient evidence to link him to the murders.

[4] On 30 August 2010, in Selangor, Malaysia, 47-year-old cosmetics millionaire Datuk Sosilawati Lawiya and her three companions – 38-year-old bank officer Noorhisham Mohamad, 32-year-old lawyer Ahmad Kamil Abdul Karim, and her 44-year-old driver Kamaruddin Shamsuddin – went to Banting from Kuala Lumpur for business matters, and they went missing thereafter.

[9][10] Regardless, given their unrelated previous acts of professional misconduct as lawyers, both Pathmanabhan and Surendren were no longer allowed to practice law through a hearing in October 2010.

In total, 2,030 specimens of burnt human bones and teeth were retrieved from the river inside the farm, and several of the four victims' personal belongings, including Sosilawati's wristwatch, were also recovered.

[18] Two other workers - 19-year-old K. Sarawanan and 26-year-old U. Suresh were also charged, not for murder but for seven counts of aiding the four alleged killers to dispose of the evidence under Section 201 of the Penal Code.

[23] Under Pathmanabhan's order, the trio – Thilaiyalagan, Kathavarayan and Matan – had battered the victims to death with a cricket bat and other weapons, and they placed the bodies on a makeshift pyre and burned it down to ashes.

The two other accomplices, U Suresh and K Sarawanan, who were serving their sentences at Sungai Udang Prison, Melaka for helping to dispose of the evidence, came to court as prosecution witnesses.

Justice Akhtar found that Pathmanabhan had a motive to kill Sosilawati due to his inability to honor a cheque issued to her and also directed the other three defendants to murder the four.

[41] Akhtar also took note of Sosilawati's intended visit to Pathmanabhan in order to expedite payment on cheques issued by his firm, and the circumstantial evidence also corroborated that the four victims were attacked and murdered by the four accused at the farm when the land deal fell through and in spite of the absence of the victims' bodies, there were sufficient evidence to prove the four guilty of murder.

The prosecution argued in response that Pathmanabhan had the motive to murder Sosilawati because he had insufficient funds to honour the cheques worth RM3 million and RM1 million due to Sosilawati over the sale of a plot of land in Penang, and also cited the three farm workers' respective roles behind the Banting killings, and urged the court to accept the guilt of the accused as presented by the circumstantial evidence.

[50] On 4 December 2015, a three-judge panel chaired by Justice Datuk Tengku Maimun Tuan Mat delivered their ruling, determining that all the four appellants were indeed guilty of the murders of Sosilawati and her three associates.

He noted that among the evidence, two of the sheets of zinc had bloodstains containing the DNA of Ahmad Kamil and Kamaruddin, while Noorhisham's DNA was found on the cricket bat, and the Indonesian maid Siti Hamidah Karnax also witnessed a huge fire coming from the farm, suggesting that it was lit to burn the bodies of the four victims and she also testified to hearing screams coming from the farm, which corroborated the circumstantial evidence against the trio.

Specifically, for the families whose loved ones were murdered, they were saddened and disappointed in the government's decision, stating that there would be no justice served if the killers who took innocent lives in cold blood were allowed to escape the gallows.

In November 2018, the families of Sosilawati and two other murder victims Anthony Kevin Morais and Stephen Wong Jing Kui also banded together on another occasion, urging the government to not abolish the death penalty.

[64][65] On another occasion in January 2020, the families of eight murder victims, including Sosilawati herself and others like Annie Kok Yin Cheng and Chee Gaik Yap, gathered together to petition to the government to not abolish the death penalty.

[72] However, the prosecution asked for the death sentences of both Thilaiyagan and Pathmanabhan to stand, since the quadruple murders were brutal and gruesome, and there was unspeakable violence and inhumanity exhibited by the offenders in the course of these four homicides.

[75][76] In response to the ruling, Erni Dekritawati Yuliana Buhari, Sosilawati's 39-year-old daughter, stated that her family found solace with the fact that the three perpetrators responsible for killing her mother and the three other men would be executed, although the pain of losing her mother still lingered on 14 years after the case, but Erni Dekritawati acknowledged that no matter the extent of the pain, the lives of the family had to move on.

[78] In November 2010, a month after the murders, the six children of Sosilawati filed a lawsuit to seek a compensation of RM60 million from the perpetrators responsible for their mother's death.

[83] Ang was sentenced to death by the High Court of Singapore in 1965 after being found guilty of murder in the absence of Cheok's body and purely based on circumstantial evidence, and he was later hanged on 6 February 1967.