On 11 September 2008, in Kulai, Johor, Malaysia, 16-year-old schoolgirl and salesgirl Lai Ying Xin (Chinese: 赖映兴) was kidnapped and murdered by a group of four youths, who extorted a ransom from her family in spite of her death.

[1][2] In 2011, the mastermind Teh Kim Hong (郑锦洪) was sentenced to death while two of Teh's co-defendants Leong Soon Long (梁顺龙) and Wong Soon Heng (黄顺兴), who were underaged at the time of the murder, were spared the gallows and detained indefinitely, and a fourth accused Wong Kah Wai (黄家伟), who was also underaged, was acquitted without his defence being called.

Due to her natural beauty and kind-natured personality, Lai was the most popular schoolgirl in her school and well-liked by her friends, teachers and schoolmates alike.

[7][8] On the night of 11 September 2008, 16-year-old Lai Ying Xin was last seen leaving a shopping mall in Kulai, where she worked part time as a salesgirl.

The suspects, who all admitted to their involvement, led the police to a forest near Taman Puteri Kulai, where the officers found the burnt body of 16-year-old Lai Ying Xin.

[11] An autopsy report was later conducted by Dr Mohammed Aznool Haidy, and he certified that Lai had been strangled to death by her killers before her body was burnt, likely to destroy evidence.

[16][17][18] Given the fact that except for Teh, the rest were all confirmed to be underaged, Malaysian law decreed that any minors convicted of murder should not be given the mandatory death penalty but to be imprisoned indefinitely at the Sultan's pleasure on state level.

However, Justice Mohd Zawawi ruled on the other hand that a prima facie case was established against the remaining three accused - Wong Soon Heng, Teh Kim Hong, and Leong Soon Long - and they were ordered to put up their defence.

In his judgement, Justice Mohd Zawawi stated that he considered the seriousness of the offences committed against Lai, and found that the trio, despite their young ages, had committed heinous crimes and were ruthless and violent, and also callously disposed of the corpse after killing Lai and burning her body, and that the trio had no conscience or remorse for depriving the life of a young girl and tormenting the victim's family, and it would be appropriate to impose the highest punishment warranted under the law.

[28][29] Days after the sentencing of her daughter's killers, Lai's mother reportedly told the press that it was her wish to see justice served, and she was never absent through the dates when the convicts appeared in court for trial.

Pang also cited Teh's relatively young age of 22, and stated that he only committed the crime in a fit of recklessness and was not a hardened or remorseless criminal incapable of rehabilitation.

[47][48] Many members of the public were similarly outraged at the news of Teh escaping the hangman's noose for the death of Lai, which remained as one of Malaysia's most horrific crimes to date in recent years.

[52] Ng Kian Nam, a Malaysian lawyer, contributed an opinion piece to the local Chinese newspaper Sin Chew Daily on 31 May 2024 (two weeks after the commutation of Teh's death sentence).

In the article, Ng questioned the Federal Court's decision to commute Teh's death sentence to 40 years in jail due to the heinous nature of Lai's murder.

He stated that the revised capital punishment laws in Malaysia should not be made retroactive as the review of all the death row cases, precisely about 1,000 or higher, would lead to the courts channelling resources into such proceedings when these resources should have been put to better use like protection of vulnerable people from crimes, helping disadvantaged groups in society and addressing societal ills, and these reviews were equivalent to reopening the wounds of the families of murder victims who desperately wanted justice to be served.

Ng also compared the rape-murder of Chee Gaik Yap to the case of Lai's death, questioning what was the difference in terms of brutality and degree of callousness that allowed Teh to escape the gallows in contrast to the killer responsible for Chee's death, for which the Federal Court had yet to give reasons why they spared Teh's life at this point in time.