Jimmy Chua Chap Seng (蔡捷成, 28 August 1947 – 10 October 1989), nicknamed Hokkien Chai, was a Singaporean criminal and former police officer who was infamous for masterminding the 1986 Pudu Prison hostage incident.
His father died when he was 13, and his mother singlehandedly brought him and his siblings up, and made a living by raising pigs at Bukit Batok and selling fish at a market.
[6] After the end of his short-lived police career, Jimmy Chua Chap Seng turned to a life of crime, and was allegedly involved in several other criminal activities, including possessing firearms and acting as the leader of a secret society.
[8][9] Chua managed to evade the police for several days after the murder, and the Royal Malaysia Police, in an effort to trace PC Mohamed Yassin's killer, sought help from their Singaporean counterparts to search for the suspect, after they found the suspect to have possible links to a gang of vehicle thieves from Singapore (where similar cases with the same modus operandi occurred).
[10][11] Chua was arrested by the Malaysian police at Jalan Khoo Teik Ee on 14 February 1984, six days after PC Mohamed Yassin's death, and thereby charged with murder.
Three of the prisoners – 32-year-old Lam Hok Sung (林福生), 24-year-old Ng Lai Huat (黃來發) and 19-year-old Sim Ah Lan (沈亞南) – were pending trial for firearm offences under the Internal Security Act, while the remaining two – 27-year-old Pang Boon Boo (方文武) and 21-year-old Yap See Keong (葉志強) – were charged for assault and rioting respectively.
[30] Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad, who was concerned with a potential political fallout should bloodshed happened in the crisis, ordered the police to not resort to violence unless necessary.
After Pang, whose identity was originally withheld in earlier media sources, gave a signal, a team of policemen, armed with canes and wooden sticks, barged into the center and subdued Chua and his associates while rescuing both Abdul Aziz and Radzi, who were unharmed.
[39] After the safe return of the hostages, Datuk Ibrahim was praised for the successful closure of the horrific chapter that shook the prison and the whole country alike.
However, the death of Chua left a huge impact on the trial outcome, as it posed a question of whether or not the kidnapping charges could be substantiated against his accomplices with his alleged ransom attempts being uncorroborated and unverified without his testimony or cross-examination.
Karpal's objections, as well as similar arguments made by other lawyers of the defendants, were accepted by the trial court, which ruled that Chua's alleged demands cannot be admitted as hearsay evidence.
[48] On 16 March 1990, the five accomplices of Chua pleaded guilty to reduced charges of wrongful confinement and abduction, therefore escaping a possible death sentence.
[49][50] However, despite evading the gallows for the Pudu hostage incident, one of the five men, Lam, was separately sentenced to hang for a firearms offence in 1988 in another trial and likely executed after losing his final appeal in 1997.
[54] A month after he masterminded the Pudu Prison siege, on 21 November 1986, 39-year-old Jimmy Chua was tried and found guilty of illegal possession of firearms and ammunition under the Internal Security Act, and sentenced to death by the Kuala Lumpur High Court.