SINGAPORE: Singapore is all set to execute a man on charges of trafficking cannabis.
According to the BBC, Tangaraju Suppiah, 46, awaited his execution on Wednesday after he was convicted of “abetting by engaging in a conspiracy to traffic” over a delivery of one 1kilogram of cannabis from Malaysia to Singapore in 2013.
Though Suppiah was not arrested during the delivery, prosecutors claimed he was responsible for coordinating it. They added that they traced two telephone numbers used by a deliveryman back to Tangaraju.
Tangaraju said he was not the person communicating with others connected to trafficking the contraband. He said he had lost one of the phones and denied having the second one.
It comes almost a year after a high-profile execution of a mentally disabled man by Singapore over drugs charges.
Singapore has one of the world’s strictest anti-drug laws that it says were necessary to protect society.
Activists said Suppiah was convicted on weak evidence, but the authorities claimed he received due process.
His family members and social activists sent letters to Singapore’s president Halimah Yacob in a last-minute plea for mercy. At the same time, British billionaire Sir Richard Branson has demanded a halt to the execution and a review of the case.
Leela Suppiah, Suppiah’s sister, told reporters at a news conference that she knows her brother has not done anything wrong. She urged the court to look at the case from the very beginning.
Under Singaporean law, drug traffickers receive the death penalty, while couriers get lesser penalties. In Tangaraju Suppiah’s last appeal, the judge had agreed with the prosecution that he was responsible for coordinating the cannabis delivery that made him ineligible for a more lenient sentence.
Activists say that Tangaraju Suppiah needed adequate access to an interpreter and had to argue his last appeal on his own since his family could not secure a lawyer.
Singapore authorities said he had requested an interpreter only during the trial and not earlier. They said that he had access to legal counsel throughout the process.
