On 22 January 1995, 47-year-old Lee Kok Yin (李国贤 Lǐ Guóxián), a taxi driver, was murdered by four Thai workers during an attempted robbery at Woodlands, Singapore.

[4][5][6] The police believed that the motive was robbery, and it was likely that the assailant(s) could have pretended to be passengers in order to board Lee's taxi before attempting to rob and also kill him.

[7] Known to be a dedicated father and husband and also a good co-worker with a thrifty personality, Lee was married with a seven-year-old son and 15-year-old daughter at the time of his death, and lived in a HDB flat at Jurong East.

All of Lee's family members (including his sister, wife and children), friends and colleagues were devastated to receive news of his death, hoping that the alleged killer(s) be brought to justice.

[13] The Singapore Police Force classified the death of Lee Kok Yin as murder, and the investigations, led by Inspector Richard Lim Beng Gee, swiftly began, starting with the interrogation of nearly 300 foreign workers living in the dormitories nearby the crime scene,[14][15][16] and Commander Heng Swee Keat, who would eventually become Singapore's 11th Deputy Prime Minister, ordered an operation to search the crime scene and activated 150 policemen to take part in the operation.

Twelve days later, on 20 May 1995, after he was drunk and brought to hospital, 28-year-old Thai worker Pracha Thanomnin, one of Kraisak's three alleged accomplices, was arrested and charged for killing the taxi driver four months before.

Kraisak's account was that on 22 January 1995 itself, after they had hatched a plan to commit robbery, Pracha, Wan, Dorn and he himself hailed a taxi, driven by Lee, from Hougang to Woodlands, where their dormitory were located.

Although they wanted to steal the belongings (specifically money and valuables) of Lee, the four workers quickly abandoned the attempt and left the crime scene after they spotted a passing vehicle heading towards the location.

[25] Pracha, on the other hand, completely denied that he participated in the robbery-murder and rather, he put up an alibi defence that he and some friends were drinking alcohol at another location at the time of the murder, although his claims were not corroborated by any witnesses of the trial.

Therefore, they decided to give Kraisak the benefit of the doubt, and instead found him guilty of attempted robbery, and sentenced him to five years of imprisonment with six strokes of the cane.