Saridewi, who committed the offence on 17 June 2016, was arrested on the same day together with the drug courier at her HDB block in Anchorvale Road, Sengkang.
Saridewi's accomplice, a 41-year-old Malaysian, received a life term with 15 strokes of the cane since he only acted as a courier and thus played a lesser role in the crime.
[11] During the trial, Saridewi did not deny that she had sold heroin, methamphetamine, marijuana and Erimin from her HDB flat, but argued that out of the 30.72g of heroin, 19.01g of this was meant for her consumption and the remaining 11.71g would be for the purpose of trafficking, and she only stocked up a lot of these drugs for the fasting month Ramadan since her daily intake of drugs increased around that time.
[14] On the other hand, Saridewi's 41-year-old accomplice Muhammad Haikal bin Abdullah, who only acted as a courier and provided full cooperation with the authorities during investigations, was spared the gallows and instead, he was sentenced to life in prison and 15 strokes of the cane.
[16] However, on 28 June 2022, the original trial judge See Kee Oon found that she had "at most been suffering from mild to moderate methamphetamine withdrawal during the statement-taking period" but the symptoms were "minimal and not noticeable" and her ability to give statements was not impaired.
[27][28] Prior to Saridewi's scheduled hanging, the last female convict to be executed in Singapore was Yen May Woen,[29] a Singaporean hairdresser who was found guilty on 21 March 2003 for trafficking 30.16g of heroin.
[41][42] Singapore, Iran and Saudi Arabia were reportedly among the few countries carrying out deaths sentences for drug trafficking worldwide in the year 2022, which saw 325 such executions taking place.
The human rights group Transformative Collective Justice (TJC), who received word of the two pending hangings, criticized the government of Singapore for the move to authorise the executions during that week itself.
[44][45] Another non-governmental organization Amnesty International also appealed to the government of Singapore to commute the death sentences of both Mohd Aziz and Saridewi to life imprisonment and stop executing any more drug traffickers on Singapore's death row, and described the upcoming double executions as "cruel and unconscionable".
In seeking clemency for Saridewi, Branson claimed that the death sentence was not an effective deterrent and it only affects the small-scale traffickers who came from marginalized backgrounds, and stated that the execution itself should be staved off before it was carried out.
They stated that Saridewi had been accorded full due process and also revealed that she had also lost her petition for presidential clemency prior to her hanging.
[57] Also, soon after Saridewi was put to death, it was reported that a former delivery driver, who was a Singaporean of Malay descent, was scheduled to hang six days later on 3 August 2023 for a conviction of trafficking heroin.
[58][59] The convict, Mohamed Shalleh Abdul Latiff, was found guilty of one count of smuggling 54.04g of diamorphine and sent to death row in 2019.
[65] Even so, a huge majority of Singaporean society still support the death penalty in spite of the international criticism faced by Singapore for the recent spate of executions of Saridewi and the other two drug traffickers between July and August 2023.