Born on 31 July 1987 in Ipoh, Malaysia, Pannir Selvam a/l Pranthaman was the third child out of six children in an ethnic Indian family.

[7] According to an official website detailing his early life and case, after completing his schooling, Pannir worked as a warehouse assistant at Panca Estetik Enterprise.

His colleagues described him as a hardworking and adept young man; his capability at work earned him his first promotion within three months of joining his first job.

[10][11][12] On 3 September 2014, 27-year-old Pannir Selvam Pranthaman was arrested at Woodlands Checkpoint, as he was discovered carrying heroin in his possession while entering Singapore.

Under the Misuse of Drugs Act, if anyone was discovered to be illegally trafficking at least 15g of heroin at the time of his or her arrest, he or she will face the gallows in Singapore.

[14] During his trial in the High Court, Pannir tried to mount a defence that he was merely a drug mule who acted on the orders of one "Anand" who offered him the job after he was feeling down from losing huge sums of money to gambling.

His mental responsibility was not impaired according to psychiatric assessments at the time of the offence, which would not make Pannir eligible for life imprisonment either.

Since he was not certified as a courier, and he was also not assessed to be suffering from any mental illnesses at the time of the offence, the High Court meted out the one and only sentence available for Pannir relating to his conviction, which was the mandatory death penalty.

The last time when clemency was granted in Singapore was in 1998, when 19-year-old Mathavakannan Kalimuthu was pardoned from execution despite being sentenced to hang for murdering a gangster in 1996.

[19][20] Pannir stated in his clemency appeal that he sincerely regretted his actions, and he hoped that he could live so that he could devote himself to Christianity and use his religion to seek redemption and to teach others to not follow in his footsteps.

The leader of the prosecution Francis Ng noted that the use of such letters was not a legal requirement but issued as a matter of administration to notify interested persons of the outcome of the clemency process.

Shanmugam emphasised that there should be no special treatment to Malaysian death row prisoners as it would undermine the integrity of Singapore's law.

[50][51] The Attorney General's Chambers (AGC) also denied another allegation that they sent Surendran a threatening letter in relation to Pannir's case.

Pannir's first song "Arah Tuju", which was sung by Malaysian rapper Santesh Kumar and released in April 2021, highlighted the plight of death row inmates and called for forgiveness and mercy.

[57][58][59] A third song penned by Pannir, titled "Di Sebalik Pintu Besi", was released in July 2022, with hip-hop artist Kidd Santhe and veteran singer Dj Dave collaborating with each other to produce it.

[67] Pannir also expressed to his sister that he wished that he can die in Malaysia, the country where he was born and grew up in and loved, and he did not want to face death in Singapore.

[68] Meanwhile, not only do Pannir's case receive international and local attention, it has an impact on the future of two of his siblings: his elder sister Sangkari and one of his younger sisters Angelia, having experienced their brother's case and its toll on their family, decided to become anti-death penalty activists in hope of bringing about more awareness about the death penalty and advocate for its abolition, as well as to ask for mercy on other death row convicts to give them second chances for rehabilitation and redemption.

Suhail, who was sentenced in 2015 for trafficking 38.84g of heroin, lost his appeal in February and August 2021 respectively and is currently on death row pending execution.

[77] She also planned to start a funding initiative titled Kitchen For Hope to provide financial help to the families of death-row inmates who were the sole breadwinners.

They argued that this law was discriminatory and would cut off the last chances of death row convicts' access to justice and also amounted to the unfairness of legal processes for these inmates.

She also said that the law was not passed for enforcement yet, and the legal rights of the death row prisoners were not breached by the provisions set out by the Pacc Act.

However, 11 days after the appeal was filed, Justice Dedar Singh Gill found there was no reasonable cause of action and dismissed the motion, as the LASCO was "perfectly entitled to adopt or change its policy regarding its provision of legal aid", and there could have been multiple reasons for LASCO to not assign lawyers for such convicts, such as the need to allocate resources to aid new defendants who were facing trial and appeal and deter possible abuse of court processes.

The judge also stated that the lack of representation from LASCO in post-appeal applications did not deprive the accused persons of their right to life or personal liberty, which was especially so since all the plaintiffs in this case were already convicted and sentenced at this stage, and also exhausted their appeals against conviction and/or sentence, and their rights to access to justice were not violated by the lack of free legal representation, given that they still had the entitlement to engage lawyers on their own accord in any post-appeal applications.

Also, Angelia revealed that ever since the execution of Nagaenthran K. Dharmalingam in April 2022, Pannir and the other Malaysian prisoners were uneasy and uncomfortable about their imminent fates since the gallows was located nearby their death row cells in the same block.

[90] In another news update in February 2023, Angelia also added that she had to save up from her insurance agent job and depend on other family members to afford the expenses her regular trips to Singapore to visit Pannir at Changi Prison, and would also help Pannir to pass on messages from the other Malaysian death row prisoners to their families who cannot visit them due to financial or health reasons.

In his diary entry regarding this instance, Too wrote, "Acting for someone on death row, the inevitability of relating to him as a human being, had taken a gigantic emotional toll on me that was for all intents and purposes, invisible, undetectable until it bursts out in torrents of tears that were no longer mine to retain.