On 10 May 2020, 38-year-old assistant manager Tay Rui Hao (Chinese: 郑锐豪; pinyin: Zhèng Ruìháo) was attacked by another person while he was jogging in the night along Punggol Field.
Tay's killing also prompted the government to pass laws to facilitate the collection of TraceTogether data for the purpose of police investigations in serious crimes, including murder.
[8][9] They managed to discover a possible suspect after monitoring the police CCTV cameras of the nearby areas around the crime scene, where a man was shown wandering around the neighbourhood with a knife.
A short period of time after his enlistment, Surajsrikan's behavioral problems became worse, resulting in him being medically downgraded, and he was later discharged early from the Singapore Armed Forces (SAF).
[16] On the night of 10 May 2020, exactly 21 years after his father abandoned his family, Surajsrikan decided to go out for a jog at Punggol Field, and he also brought along his foldable army knife and wet wipes.
According to his lawyer, Edmond Pereira, Surajsrikan took the knife with the intention to hurt himself, as he was overwhelmed with the emotional scars caused by his father's abandonment.
They highlighted that the defendant had premeditated the attack by bringing a knife and wet wipes, and senselessly committed the murder just to let out his anger and despair over his personal troubles, and in a brutal manner through repeated stabbing.
The prosecution pointed out that Surajsrikan targeted a stranger and showed a lack of remorse for his crime based on his post-killing behavior, for which his actions caused considerable public disquiet and thus he deserved the maximum number of strokes.
[21][22] Having heard the submissions, Justice Gill decided to sentence Surajsrikan to serve a single term of life imprisonment, and also ordered the defendant to receive 15 strokes of the cane.
[26][27] The move to pass these new laws caused a public outcry, as some questioned the possible invasion of privacy through the police's access to every user's personal data on TraceTogether.
Several members of the opposition, like Progress Singapore Party member Leong Mun Wai and Workers' Party chairman Pritam Singh, objected to the police's access to users' personal data on TraceTogether out of concern for the potential breach of public trust in the government, due to the Government having made re-assurances that this data would be used to detect potential cases of COVID-19 infection during the early period of launching TraceTogether.
[28][29][30] On 23 September 2022, a week after Surajsrikan's sentencing, with regards to the public probe about why Surajsrikan was sentenced to lifetime imprisonment despite the fact that murder carries the death penalty in Singapore, the newspaper CNA released an exclusive article, in which several lawyers explained during separate interviews about why life imprisonment was imposed on several murderers while the death penalty was received in other cases.
The lawyers - Johannes Hadi, Meenakshi and Tania Chin - stated that based on the landmark case of Kho Jabing, a Malaysian who was hanged in 2016 for murdering Cao Ruyin during an armed robbery, the Court of Appeal, in overturning Kho's life term and imposing a death sentence a second time on Kho, laid out sentencing guidelines, which they highlighted that the death penalty for murder by fatal injury (but no intention to kill) should only be imposed in cases where an offender's conduct was vicious and demonstrated a blatant disregard for human life, as well as sparking an outrage of the community's feelings.
Turning to the case of the Punggol Field murder, one of the lawyers, Hadi, said that Surajsrikan's multiple mental disorders, low intellect, absence of criminal records and his relatively young age of 20 may have been relevant considerations made by the trial judge, Dedar Singh Gill, during sentencing.
Legal experts analyzed that one's potential to commit murder may arise from several compounding factors, including mental conditions, stress and personal circumstances, and it was more plausible for a murder to happen within the family due to the opportunity to strike is greater when there are close familial ties and shared living arrangements, in addition to any relevant compounding factors.