On 2 September 2018, four-year-old Nursabrina Agustiani Abdullah (2014 – 2 September 2018), also known as Sabrina, died from blunt force trauma to the abdomen after her stepfather physically assaulted her by pushing her and kicking her in the stomach twice, which resulted in extensive intra-abdominal bleeding that caused the girl to die a day after the assault, despite her parents' attempt to resuscitate her.
Sabrina's stepfather, 25-year-old Muhammad Salihin bin Ismail, was later arrested and charged with murder, a crime that warrants the death penalty in Singapore.
The court found Salihin guilty of the original charge of murder and re-sentenced him to life in prison with 12 strokes of the cane after they concluded that his deliberate actions of kicking Sabrina constituted an act of murder, since his intentional actions led to the injuries that caused Sabrina to die, even if he had no intent to cause her death.
When Sabrina was two years old, her mother married a Singaporean citizen named Muhammad Salihin bin Ismail (born in 1993) on 31 August 2016.
[8] From 2006 to 2016, Salihin had been sentenced to probation, reformative training and military detention (during his National Service) for various offences, ranging from theft, robbery to drug consumption.
[13][14] Later that evening, during dinner, Sabrina did not have an appetite due to stomach pain after eating a few mouthfuls of chicken rice, and she vomited on the sofa.
An autopsy by forensic pathologist Dr Gilbert Lau revealed that Sabrina died as a result of blunt force trauma to the abdomen, which caused internal bleeding.
[16][17][18] A day after his stepdaughter died, 25-year-old Muhammad Salihin bin Ismail was arrested after the hospital authorities made a police report regarding Sabrina's death.
Salihin's charge of murder was slated under Section 300(c) of the Penal Code, which carries either a death sentence or life imprisonment with caning if found guilty.
[20] Sabrina's birth mother, who was arrested by the Central Narcotics Bureau in June 2020 for consuming methamphetamine, was called as a witness while she was remanded for trial.
[28] Justice Pang also accepted that Salihin never punched his stepdaughter, and had used his knuckles and fist to hold Sabrina in place on the toilet bowl.
In summary, 29-year-old Muhammad Salihin bin Ismail was acquitted of murder, but he was found guilty of a lesser charge of voluntarily inflicting grievous hurt, an offence that warranted a sentence of up to ten years' imprisonment, in addition to a fine or caning.
Therefore, the judge sentenced 29-year-old Muhammad Salihin bin Ismail to nine years' imprisonment and 12 strokes of the cane, and the jail term was backdated to the date of his arrest.
[39][40] On the same date, after deliberating the arguments on both sides, the three-judge panel - consisting of Chief Justice Sundaresh Menon and two Judges of Appeal, Debbie Ong Siew Ling and Tay Yong Kwang - released their decision, ruling that 31-year-old Muhammad Salihin Ismail should be convicted of murder under Section 300(c) of the Penal Code, and therefore increased his initial jail term of nine years to life imprisonment, the minimum punishment allowed for murder in Singapore.
[41][42] In their grounds of decision, the appellate court stated that the law did not require the prosecution to prove that a defendant accused of murder had the intention to cause the medical consequences of his actions.