Professor Chao Tzee Cheng, a senior forensic pathologist, conducted an autopsy on the victim, and he found that Murthi sustained a total of 11 stab wounds on his body, and one of them penetrated the heart while another had cut through the right lung; both these injuries were sufficient in the ordinary course of nature to cause death.
The trial court was told that one night in December, just days prior to the murder, there was a dispute between two roommates living at a Serangoon rental flat, caused by the two men kicking each other while sleeping.
A man named Mutayan, who was threatened by Vijayan, decided to seek the help of Murthi to help bury the hatchet between the parties involved in the dispute.
However, based on the facts brought forward, Murthi began to shout repeatedly while in a drunken state, and he allegedly said, "Who has given houses to Malaysians?"
The judges accepted the arguments of DPP Ang that there was no chopper attack or assault initiated by Murthi prior to the stabbing, and hence his claims of self-defence were not to be believed.
[17][18] Based on the above findings, the trial court decided that there were sufficient grounds to return with a guilty verdict of murder in Vijayan's case.
The appellate court's three judges - Supreme Court judges Choor Singh and Tan Ah Tah, and Chief Justice Wee Chong Jin - dismissed the appeal on the grounds that the defence of sudden and grave provocation was untenable in light of Vijayan's disproportionate violence to the provocation given by Murthi in his drunken state.
Vijayan was defended by veteran lawyer and opposition politician David Saul Marshall, while the prosecution was led by Tan Teow Yeow during the appeal session.
[24] Similarly, on the same day, the Privy Council also rejected the appeals of both Pehn Kwan Jin and Jorge Belardo Belleza against their death sentences.
[25][26] Pehn, a seaman, was found guilty of murdering a vegetable seller Tan Eng Kim in 1973 while Belleza, a mechanic of Filipino descent, was convicted of killing his lover Alice Ong in 1974.
Notably, in the case of Ithinin Kamari, who was charged with the double murder of Mohamed Johar Selamat and Mohd Said Abdul Majid in 1989.