22-year-old Myanmar national Zin Mar Nwe, who was working as a maid in Singapore, was found guilty of murder on Thursday (18 May), according to The Straits Times.
She had stabbed her employer’s 70-year-old mother-in-law 26 times after the latter had threatened to send her back to Myanmar.
Zin had come to Singapore to work back in January 2018, and she was told by her agent to declare her age as 23 – investigations later revealed that she was 17 years old at the time.
Background of the murder
Zin Mar Nwe began working for her third employer, identified in court documents as Mr S, on 10 May 2018, and about 2 weeks later on 26 May 2018, Mr S’s mother-in-law came to visit from India for a one-month stay in Singapore.
The identities of the victim and the family members cannot be revealed due to a court order because one of the witnesses is under the age of 18.
Zin and her employer’s mother-in-law were alone in the flat on 25 June 2018 when she grabbed a knife from the kitchen and stabbed her several times, before leaving the scene with some cash and going back to her agency where she asked for her passport.
However the staff at the agency told her to contact her employer and she then left the premises before wandering around for about 5 hours before returning to the agency, where she was subsequently arrested.
She then denied stabbing the elderly woman at first, pushing the blame on two men, but eventually confessed to her crime.
Reasons for the murder
Zin said that she was physically mistreated by the deceased, and when the victim had threatened to send her back to the agent which would see her going back to Myanmar in debt, she then stabbed her in response.
She also listed the several times the victim had ill-treated her during her fifth statement to the police on 1 July 2018, saying that the victim had used her knuckles to knock her head or back, whenever she didn’t understand the victim’s instructions.
She said that she was knocked about 2 to 3 times a day on average by the victim, and once when she was massaging the deceased, the latter slapped her because the massage was too painful.
She also claimed that on one occasion when she accidentally turned on the stove wrongly, which resulted in a sudden burst of fire that burned the victim slightly, the victim held her (the maid’s) hand close to the fire in retaliation.
The case has since been adjourned for sentencing at a later date, and Zin Mar New faces either the death penalty or life imprisonment.