Singapur. Tangaraju Suppiah: The First Execution Notice of 2023

Rocky, a fellow member of the Transformative Justice Collective, called in the afternoon. "I have some bad news," he said.

I immediately knew what he was going to say. I just didn't know whose name I would hear on the line next.

"Tangaraju got an execution notice today."

(…)

Tangaraju s/o Suppiah is 46 years old. He was arrested on 23 January 2014 for drug consumption and failure to report for a drug test. About a couple of months later, the authorities identified him as potentially linked to the arrests of two guys, Mogan and Suresh, back in September 2013. Two phone numbers, one of which had been used to coordinate a delivery of cannbis with Mogan in September 2013, were claimed to belong to Tangaraju. As a 2022 court judgment states, by the time Tangaraju was linked to Mogan and Suresh's arrests, he was "already in remand and none of his mobile phones could be recovered for analysis."

As is the practice with investigations in Singapore, Tangaraju was questioned by the police without a lawyer present. Tangaraju said he'd asked for a Tamil interpreter while his statement was being recorded, but had been denied; because of this, he'd had trouble properly understanding the English-language statement that was read back to him.

The High Court found Tangaraju guilty of conspiring to traffic 1,017.9g of cannabis, and sentenced him to mandatory death in 2018 (with written grounds of decision provided on 31 December 2018). (Talking Drugs, UK, 16.05.2023)

https://www.talkingdrugs.org/tangaraju-suppiah-the-first-execution-notice-of-2023