Due to his mother's negligence and lack of parental care and attention, Nazeri, who had only a primary school education, began to stay away from home more often and was addicted to drugs when he was 14.

His accomplice, a 24-year-old Malaysian named Dominic Martin Fernandez, was also arrested at another location after he went separate ways with Nazeri at the end of their delivery.

After searching Nazeri's sling bag, officers of the Central Narcotics Bureau (CNB) recovered two black-taped bundles which contained about 960g of heroin, which were estimated to have a street worth of S$144,000.

He stated that he wanted to sell only about 13.318g of the diamorphine (the amount was below the minimum threshold of 15g that warrant the death penalty), while the rest were meant for his own consumption.

[11] Since Nazeri failed to satisfy the requirements of a courier and not assessed with any mental illnesses, he was sentenced to death by Senior Judge Kan Ting Chiu on 8 August 2017, two years after the beginning of his trial.

Nazeri re-used his defence that he only meant to keep most of the drugs for his consumption and even added that prior to his capture, he wanted to return the second bundle after receiving it.

He even prepared a psychiatric report to support his contention, and his former lawyer James Masih also admitted in another source that he overlooked certain matters during the trial that would have aided Nazeri's defence.

The lawsuit was about allegations that the private letters between the death row inmates and both their lawyers and families were being forwarded to the Attorney General's Chambers (AGC) by the prison authorities, and it led to Nazeri and the others bringing forward the lawsuit against the AGC for alleged breaches of conduct to protect the inmates' rights, misconduct in public office and seeking damages for any harm caused by such.

She stated that while she knew her brother's execution would highly likely be carried out, she still held on to hope and the case had made her decide to advocate for the death penalty to be abolished.

They hoped that the members of Parliament could view the issue of capital punishment more seriously due to its impact on families and its alleged ineffectiveness to deter crime.

[29][30][31] Not only there were appeals for clemency in his case, the scheduling of Nazeri's execution brought attention and debate to the alleged racial makeup of Singapore's death row where most of the drug convicts were Malay.

[34][35] The calls for abolition only intensified since March 2022 till Nazeri's death warrant, when the Singapore government authorized four executions (including Abdul Kahar Othman and Nagaenthran K. Dharmalingam) after a two-year moratorium on all hangings due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Justice Phang, who pronounced the verdict, cited the High Court's decision, "There is simply 'no substratum of fact to support a real possibility of relief being granted.

[50] On 22 July 2022, 64-year-old Nazeri bin Lajim was hanged at dawn inside Changi Prison, thus becoming the fifth death row convict to be executed during the COVID-19 pandemic in Singapore.

[51] According to activist Kokila Annamalai, Nazeri's family reclaimed his remains from the prison, and there would be funeral prayers held at Masjid Assyakirin in Taman Jurong.

[52][53] The Singapore Prison Service (SPS) confirmed to AFP in an email statement that Nazeri's capital sentence was carried out as scheduled.

[62] Kokila Annamalai also posted on social media a final photo of Nazeri taken before his execution and offered condolences to his bereaved family.

[63] Aside from their condemnation of execution, the United Nations also criticized Singapore's use of the death penalty for drugs and stated it was not in accordance to the international standards of the use of capital punishment.

[64] In August 2022, a news report revealed that due to the case of Nazeri and several others (notably Nagaenthran K. Dharmalingam), there were discussions among Singaporeans about the need for compassion for some death row inmates, since there were increasing citations by activists the cases of some drug traffickers who came from low-income families or having drug addictions before ending up on death row.

[65] In April 2023, in light of Malaysia's abolition of the mandatory death sentence for murder, drug trafficking and all other capital offences, Nazeri's sister Nazira stated that while this move would possibly allow Singaporeans to rethink on the validity of capital punishment in their society, she doubted that this would allow the government to budge on their stance towards the death penalty in Singapore.