On 27 May 2022, Singapore’s Court of Appeal overturned the conviction of Raj Kumar Aiyachami, 40, who had been on death row for trafficking more than 1.8 kilograms of cannabis, finding it was a case of mistaken delivery.[1][2] The same judgment acquitted Ramadass Punnusamy, 41, who had been sentenced to life imprisonment with 15 strokes of the cane as a drug courier.[1][2]
The 2015 delivery
Both men were arrested on 21 September 2015 after Ramadass, then a lorry driver for a Johor Bahru transport company, drove into Singapore and handed a red plastic bag to Raj at Senoko Drive while Central Narcotics Bureau officers watched.[1][2] Raj was convicted in 2020 of possessing the cannabis for the purpose of trafficking, which carries a mandatory death sentence.[1][2]
The prison encounter
Between November 2017 and January 2018, Raj met Mark Kalaivanan Tamilarasan in prison and learned that Mark had ordered chemically sprayed tobacco known as Butterfly but received cannabis instead at Senoko Loop on the same day.[1][2] The trial judge rejected Mark’s testimony, finding ample opportunity for collusion and ruling Raj must have known from the package’s smell, but Chief Justice Sundaresh Menon, with Justices Andrew Phang and Belinda Ang, held the evidence could not be dismissed without a specific finding of collusion.[1] The court also found Ramadass’s police statements too inconsistent to rely on, accepting he believed he carried tobacco, and acquitted both men.[1][2]
