Manap worked as a disco jockey in a discotheque, and he had also gone to prison for 21 months due to him going AWOL while serving his national service in the Singapore Civil Defence Force (SCDF).
[2] Eventually, Aniza formulated a plan to commit the murder of her husband, and she told Nasir to help her kill Manap.
[1][2][4] After failing to find a hired hitman to go after Manap, Nasir was faced with Aniza's insistence to commit the murder, and he promised to do so personally by the end of the month.
On the night of 1 July 2007, Nasir wore a helmet and armed himself with a knife, and he waited outside Manap's matrimonial flat in Whampoa.
Manap, who met Nasir before and knew him, reportedly spoke in Malay, "Apa salah aku pada kau?
[8][9][10] However, Nasir was 16 years and ten months old at the time of the murder, and hence if found guilty, he would not face the death penalty but be imprisoned indefinitely at the President's Pleasure (TPP) instead, because minors who were aged below 18 cannot be executed.
Nasir was reportedly angered and felt betrayed when he heard that Aniza falsely accused him as the mastermind and pinned the whole blame on him.
[17][18][19] The perpetrator, Tharema Vejayan Govindasamy, was found guilty of murdering his ex-wife Smaelmeeral Abdul Aziz and given the death penalty in May 2009.
They cited that Aniza was the mastermind of the murder, and she had ended the life of her husband in a cold-blooded and premeditated manner and even solicited Nasir, who had at all nothing to do with her marital issues, to stab her husband to death, and her conduct was extremely abhorrent and malicious that the emphasis of Aniza's sentence should be placed on the need for retribution and deterrence, to prevent any like-minded offenders from attempting to solicit the murder of their spouses or ex-spouses, and likened the case to that of the infamous-wife-killer Anthony Ler, who was found guilty of soliciting the murder of his wife by a 15-year-old student.
Justice Chan also considered the sentencing guidelines, finding that Aniza's depression was of moderate severity and could still be treated, and she also showed a low risk of re-offending and could still lead a normal life after her release.
Hence, Justice Chan decided to sentence 25-year-old Aniza Essa to nine years' imprisonment, and backdate her jail term to the date of her arrest in July 2007.
[28][29][30] During the appeal hearing at the Court of Appeal in July 2008, Woon argued that the original trial judge Chan Seng Onn had placed undue reliance on the mitigation plea of Aniza,[31] and he argued that there was a disparity between the sentences of Nasir and Aniza, because the mastermind Aniza was sentenced to jail for nine years on a manslaughter charge while the accomplice Nasir was indefinitely detained at the President's Pleasure since 2008 on a charge of murder,[32] and unlike Aniza, who would be possibly released on parole after serving two-thirds of her sentence (equivalent to six years), Nasir's sentence was effectively a jail term for a longer period (ranging between ten and 20 years) until he will be assessed suitable for release through a presidential pardon on a later date.
Earlier, Justice Chan relied on that criteria to decide that Aniza should not get life on account of her moderately-severe psychiatric condition despite the inhumane nature of Manap's murder.
Nasir was represented by Singapore's best criminal lawyer Subhas Anandan, and the trial was presided by Justice Kan Ting Chiu of the High Court.
[43][44] During the trial, Nasir was allowed to submit a mitigation plea since he would not face the death penalty for murdering Manap, and this would help him in his periodic review for release after at least ten years of indefinite detention.
[45][46] A psychiatric report by Dr Pavarthy Pathy also revealed that Nasir was remorseful for his actions, and he no longer felt love but anger for Aniza for having used him and wanted "to hurt her".
[49] On that same day, Justice Kan officially sentenced 17-year-old Muhammad Nasir Abdul Aziz to be imprisoned indefinitely at the President's Pleasure (TPP).
[52][53] Ler was sentenced to hang for the murder, and executed on 13 December 2002,[54] while the boy was spared the gallows due to his age and served 17 years in prison under the TPP.
[61] In his book, Anandan compared the case as similar to that of his former client Anthony Ler, who also manipulated a teenager to murder his wife, although the difference was that Ler's accomplice did so for money and was manipulated and threatened with his life, Nasir did so out of love for Aniza and threatened to lose her, and he wrote that it was ridiculous and unfair that his young client Nasir, who was clearly manipulated by Aniza, whom Subhas described as a "manipulative monster" in his book, had to pay a very heavy price for what he had done while Aniza herself, as the mastermind, escaped with a light punishment, reflecting his sympathy for the youth and his disappointment over the lack of compassion from the law and prosecutors, who refused to agree to his requests to reduce Nasir's murder charge in light of his youth and other mitigating factors of the case.