[1] On 19 March 2014, inside her bungalow at Victoria Park, Bukit Timah, an elderly woman was found dead in her swimming pool and with head injuries.

He found that Gan sustained a fractured skull that led to head injuries which were sufficient in the ordinary course of nature to cause death.

[5] Although the crime scene itself was clean, forensic experts were able to use forensic technology to reveal the bloodstains that had been reportedly washed by the maid, including a trail of blood that started from the bedroom of the victim to the swimming pool, suggesting that Gan was dragged to the pool after she was allegedly killed in her bedroom.

Earlier this month, a 24-year-old Myanmar maid Than Than Win was arrested for murdering her employer's 87-year-old mother-in-law Yong Wan Lan.

[16][17][18] During the course of investigations however, it was discovered that Dewi was possibly not 23 years old at the time of the murder, and her lawyer also requested to the court to amend her age.

Given her true age was 18 at the time of the murder, Dewi could still be sentenced to death if she was found guilty of murder, because the laws of Singapore allowed the courts to impose a death sentence for offenders aged 18 and above at the time of the offence, should such convicts be found guilty of whichever crime warrants capital punishment.

On the other hand, criminals aged below 18 at the time of the offence would be spared the gallows and instead sentenced to life imprisonment if they were found guilty of murder.

[22][23] According to Dr Kenneth Koh, a psychiatrist from the Institute of Mental Health, he found that Dewi was suffering from "acute stress reaction", a psychological disorder resulting from exposure to trauma.

According to Dr Koh, Dewi's condition, coupled by social factors such as her young age and her past experiences of abuse by her father, had significantly impaired her judgment, impulse control and mental responsibility at the time of the murder.

[5] Nancy Gan Wan Geok was born in Hong Kong on 27 February 1945, and she spent her childhood growing up in Singapore.

Gan studied overseas at one point during her schooling years, and she graduated from Trinity College London, and became a classical pianist.

Gan would continue to paint landscapes, flora and fauna on porcelain and regularly donate her artworks to charity, and also devoted much of her time to philanthropic activities in Singapore and the Far East.

[27][28] Born on 5 August 1995, Dewi Sukowati was the eldest of three daughters in her family, who all came from Pati, a village in Central Java, Indonesia.

[5] The following was the official version of the murder of Nancy Gan, based on the confession of Dewi Sukowati and other evidence gathered by the authorities.

[5][31] After she threw Gan's corpse into the swimming pool, Dewi rushed back into the house to clean it and remove the bloodstains.

She first cleaned away the trail of blood from the deceased's bedroom to the swimming pool by mopping the floor multiple times, and disposed of the bloodstained items from Gan's bungalow.

On one hand, he accepted that Dewi was suffering from diminished responsibility at the material time, and he also accepted other factors such as Dr Koh's contention that Dewi could still recover with appropriate treatment and had a low risk of re-offending, her young age, her personal circumstances, the abuse and provocation issued by Gan and the need for rehabilitation.

On the other hand, however, Judicial Commissioner Foo directed his attention to the aggravating factors of the crime, stating that even though it was not disputed that Dewi was provoked into fracturing Gan's skull by slamming her head on the wall, Dewi's subsequent actions of throwing the unconscious Gan into the swimming pool to properly render her dead and attempt to cover up the crime as suicide demonstrated a high degree of calculation and premeditation.

Giving their reasons to uphold Dewi's sentence, the appellate judges found that after the first assault, Dewi's subsequent acts of throwing the unconscious victim into her swimming pool and covering up the death as suicide were demonstrative of her intention to silence Gan and avoid retribution from the authorities for having assaulted Gan, and based on the precedent cases of maids killing their employers or their employers' family member(s), the nature of Dewi's case was aggravated and brutal and it was comparable to the more serious cases where the maximum sentence of life in prison or 20 years in jail was imposed, and hence, they found no initiative to reduce Dewi's jail term, and thus dismissed her appeal for a lower sentence.

Should she maintain good behavior while in prison, Dewi would be released on parole in March 2026 after completing at least two-thirds of her sentence (equivalent to 12 years).

Therefore, the Indonesian government also sought to discuss with the host countries to improve the working conditions of maids who originated from Indonesia.