In early April 1972, Mohamed Yasin bin Hussin (born 1953), alias Rosli, then 19 years old, formed an intention to rob a 58-year-old shop owner from Pulau Ubin.
The shop owner was a widow named Poon Sai Im, who made a living by selling provisions in a shophouse.
Knowing that Poon was quite wealthy and kept a lot of money in her house, Yasin approached his friend and fellow labourer, 25-year-old Harun bin Ripin[a] (born 1946) to join him in the robbery attempt.
[1] That night, Yasin and Harun rowed a sampan boat from Changi Point Jetty to Pulau Ubin, and both arrived at the beach nearby Poon's house.
Upon the appearance of the woman, Yasin and Harun made their move and caught hold of Poon and covered her mouth to prevent her from shouting.
[8][9][10][11] Forensic pathologist and professor Chao Tzee Cheng, who examined Poon's corpse, found that the woman was not dead by drowning but by murder.
Professor Chao also found bruises on her face and wrists, which were defensive injuries caused by Poon trying to defend herself against her attacker(s) and her being punched or hit by a blunt object.
[12] Nine months later, on 9 February 1973, when he was arrested for another crime, 26-year-old Harun surprised his police interrogators by confessing to them about his involvement in the then-unsolved Pulau Ubin robbery.
[15][16][17][18][19][20][21] After the prosecution presented its case, and after the pathologist Chao gave his evidence to the courts, both Yasin and Harun were told to give their defence.
The lawyers of Yasin and Harun emphasised in their closing submissions that their clients only intended to commit theft and their lack of weapons showed that they had not planned violence.
[24] In rebuttal, the prosecution, led by Deputy Public Prosecutor (DPP) Pala Krishnan argued that regardless of whether the two defendants were armed, as long as there was evidence to show that the pair's common intention was robbery and the injuries inflicted by Yasin upon Poon were sufficient in the ordinary cause of nature to cause death, then the two would be guilty of murder.
They also noted the fact that while Harun was inside the other room looking for valuables, Yasin had raped Poon while restraining the woman during the robbery and Harun's absence, and so the two judges cannot rule out the theory that Yasin had caused the nine fatal rib fractures on Poon in furtherance of his intention to rape the elderly woman, leading to her death.
[27] Aside from this, given the facts of the case, the judges found that Harun could not be held liable for a conviction of murder by being guilty through the legal definition of common intention given that Yasin did the killing through his own individual impulse to commit sexual assault, hence they find 28-year-old Harun guilty of robbery by night, and sentenced him to 12 years' imprisonment and 12 strokes of the cane.
[29] Yasin was promptly placed on death row in Changi Prison with 14 other inmates waiting to be executed (among them were the seven adult culprits of the 1971 Gold Bars triple murders).
On 4 November 1974, however, the three judges hearing the appeal - T Kulasekaram, Tan Ah Tah and Chief Justice Wee Chong Jin - found that there was no doubt that Yasin had intentionally caused the nine fatal broken rib injuries on 58-year-old Poon, which therefore fitted the definition of murder under Section 300(c) of the Penal Code and thus appropriate for Yasin to be convicted of murder by application of the law.
They also accepted the forensic evidence by Professor Chao, as argued by prosecutor Glenn Knight (who replaced Pala Krishnan and assigned the case), that the fractures were caused by compression of the chest with some force, This compelled the judges to dismiss Yasin's appeal.
[34] In their verdict, the three Privy Council judges, led by Lord Diplock, found that there was no evidence to suggest that Yasin had intended to cause the death of Poon when he sat on her chest.
Instead, they found him guilty of causing death by a rash or negligent act not amounting to culpable homicide under Section 304A of the Penal Code.
[40] Following the reprieve from death row by the Privy Council, Yasin was soon brought back to court in Singapore, with the prosecution charged him with raping Poon.
[48] More than 32 years after the murder of Poon Sai Im, the case of Yasin and Harun were re-enacted in Singaporean crime show True Files.
He stated that the Privy Council back then may have felt that Yasin never intended to cause the fatal injury and thus it cannot constitute as an offence of murder and concluded that the woman had just unfortunately died.
[50] A webpage dedicated to the late Professor Chao, titled Dead Men Do Tell Tales, was published after his passing in 2000, and it recounted some of the notable cases he performed autopsies in and cracked before.
Professor Chao's comments on Yasin's case were also published in the article, and he said (extracted from the website): "...if there had been no autopsy, (Poon) might have been certified as having died by drowning.
Original text of Section 300(c) (Extracted from the Penal Code): (c): if it is done with the intention of causing bodily injury to any person, and the bodily injury intended to be inflicted is sufficient in the ordinary course of nature to cause death[52] There were discussions related to the Privy Council's verdict regarding the need to find a person guilty of murder with no intention to kill.
It contradicted the Singaporean courts' normal procedure to convict a person of murder with a "broad injury" approach, which they adopted from an Indian court case verdict Virsa Singh v the State of Punjabi relating to find a person guilty of intentionally inflicting a serious injury which is sufficient to kill regardless of whether he/she knew the fatality of the injury even if he/she had no intention to kill, leading to confusion among the judges in Singapore Being constantly cited in later murder verdicts in later years since 1976, the Yasin verdict was one of the judgements in which it questioned the problematic application of Section 300(c) in court cases to find a person guilty of murder with no intention to cause death, and its wording gave rise to ambiguity to its real definition.