Maid who fatally stabbed employer’s mum-in-law 26 times gets life sentence reduced to 17 years’ jail
Source: Straits Times
Article Date: 27 Aug 2025
Author: Selina Lum
The court amended the murder charge to one of culpable homicide not amounting to murder after accepting the argument by her lawyers that she had been provoked at the time of the killing, and said it was satisfied that the provocation was grave and sudden.
A domestic worker who was given life imprisonment in 2023 for murdering her employer’s mother-in-law was sentenced to 17 years’ jail on a reduced charge of culpable homicide by the Court of Appeal on Aug 26.
Zin Mar Nwe, 24, had stabbed the victim 26 times on June 25, 2018, after the 70-year-old woman threatened to send her back to the agent.
The helper from Myanmar was 17 years old at the time, although her passport falsely stated that she was 23, the minimum age for working as a domestic worker in Singapore.
At her appeal hearing on May 14, the court amended the murder charge to one of culpable homicide not amounting to murder after accepting the argument by her lawyers that she had been provoked at the time of the killing.
In sentencing her on Aug 26, the court said it was satisfied that the provocation was grave and sudden as the elderly woman’s “single verbal utterance” represented a threat to the maid’s employment and livelihood.
This threat was amplified by the maid’s youth, immaturity, financial vulnerability, family circumstances and prior acts of physical abuse inflicted on her by the mother-in-law, said the court.
The court, comprising Chief Justice Sundaresh Menon, Justice Tay Yong Kwang and Justice See Kee Oon, considered that the attack was brutal and that the maid’s offence was aggravated by her use of a weapon.
However, the judges did not accept the prosecution’s suggestion that she had tried to conceal her crime.
They noted that while Zin Mar Nwe had washed the knife she used to stab the victim, she had left it in the kitchen.
She did not take any meaningful steps to evade arrest and returned to the agency even though she knew she risked arrest, said the court.
The victim and her family members cannot be named owing to a gag order as one of the witnesses in the trial was below the age of 18.
On hearing her sentence through an interpreter, Zin Mar Nwe pressed her palms together and bowed her head slightly.
Deputy Public Prosecutor Kumaresan Gohulabalan had sought a jail term of 18 to 20 years.
Lawyers Josephus Tan and Cory Wong, who acted pro bono under the Criminal Legal Aid Scheme, asked for a sentence of between 14 and 18 years’ jail.
They noted that Zin Mar Nwe had come to Singapore to help her debt-ridden family.
The victim’s threat went “straight to the heart” of her economic survival as she was effectively faced with an existential threat to be sent back to Myanmar with crippling debt, they argued.
Zin Mar Nwe came to Singapore on Jan 5, 2018.
She started working for her third employer, Mr S, on May 10, 2018.
About two weeks later, Mr S’ family of four was joined by his mother-in-law, who came from India for a one-month stay.
Zin Mar Nwe said the elderly woman began hitting her to get her attention or to reprimand her, such as using her knuckles to knock the maid on her head and back.
Once, when the maid turned on the stove wrongly, resulting in a burst of flames that singed the mother-in-law, the elderly woman retaliated by pulling the maid’s hand close to the flames.
On another occasion, when the maid dropped a spice box cover on the elderly woman’s foot, the mother-in-law hit the maid with a hot pan.
On June 25 that year, the two women were alone in the flat when the maid grabbed a knife from the kitchen and repeatedly stabbed the woman.
The maid said the stabbing was triggered by the woman’s threat to send her back to the agent.
After the stabbing, the maid left the flat with some cash and went to her agency to ask for her passport.
She left the place when she heard that the staff were about to call her employer.
She roamed around for five hours before returning to the agency, where she was arrested.
She initially denied stabbing the victim and pinned the blame on two men.
During her High Court trial, her previous lawyers relied on another partial defence – that she was suffering from a mental condition that diminished her responsibility for her actions.
This defence was rejected by the trial judge.
Source: The Straits Times © SPH Media Limited. Permission required for reproduction.
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