The boys' fellow classmate and friend Ram Puneet Tiwary (born 1979), also a Singaporean, was accused of these two violent murders.
After filing an appeal, a re-trial was ordered and conducted in 2009 for Tiwary, who was once again found guilty in the second trial and received a sentence of 48 years' imprisonment.
After the higher courts of Australia reviewed the case, Tiwary was finally acquitted upon his second appeal and freed nine years after the murders.
On 15 September 2003, two Singaporeans – 26-year-old Tay Chow Lyang and 27-year-old Tony Tan Poh Chuan – were found murdered in their flat in Sydney, Australia.
The victims' 24-year-old flatmate and fellow Singaporean, Ram Puneet Tiwary, who happened to be asleep in his room at the time of the murders, was awakened by sounds of violence.
Tiwary, together with both Tay and Tan, attended the same class at the University of New South Wales (UNSW) at that time for an engineering course on an army scholarship.
The second appeal was focused on Tiwary's tone in his phone call to the ambulance, the victims' unusual behaviour on the day of the murder as witnessed by several people and the forensic evidence.
The Court of Appeal decided that the evidence against Tiwary was not satisfactory and acquitted him of the charges two days after the hearing, 26 July 2012.
It is mentioned in an article that Tiwary had made a trip around the world after his return to Singapore, and did not complete the mechanical engineering degree from Sydney.