A 37-year-old Malaysian man has been sentenced to death in Singapore via a Zoom video-call for his role in a drug deal. This is the city-state’s first such verdict done via remote technology.
Punithan Genasan received the sentence for his role in a 2011 heroin transaction on Friday. The verdict was received by Genasan’s lawyer Peter Fernando.
Singapore has so far reported 29,364 cases of the coronavirus and 22 deaths.
Rights groups have called deliverance of a death sentence via remote technology to be inherently inhumane. Genasans’s lawyer Fernando, however, did not object to the use of video-conferencing for Friday's call since it was only to receive the judge's verdict, which could be heard clearly, and no other legal arguments were presented.
Fernando said that they would appeal against the judge's verdict.
A spokesperson of Singapore Supreme Court was quoted in a Reuters report as saying that the verdict was made remotely to protect wellbeing of parties involved in the hearing.
Many court hearings in Singapore have been postponed since the lockdown that was imposed in early April. Hearings for many cases will be done via Zoom calls as lockdown is expected to last till June 1.
Singapore has a zero-tolerance policy for illegal drugs and has hanged hundreds of people— including foreigners— for narcotics offences over past decades.
The Human Rights Watch had also objected to a death sentence that was delivered remotely in Nigeria on May 7. The decision was delivered by a judge in a Lagos court after Olalekan Hameed was found guilty of murdering his mother’s employer in 2018.
