'Possessive' husband admits to stabbing wife to death in their Loyang condo

• Krishnan Raju stabbed and strangled his wife, thinking that she was cheating on him
• Psychiatrists said that he was suffering from delusional disorder (jealous type) at the time
• He has not been sentenced as psychiatrists disagreed over whether he was also heavily intoxicated

SINGAPORE — Ever since they were married, Krishnan Raju kept a close watch on his wife, tracking who she was with and where she went.

One evening in October 2017, under the impression that she was having an affair, he stabbed her several times while she was in the shower and strangled her when she started to scream.

When he realised that she had become motionless, he fled to Johor Baru, Malaysia in his car. 

He eventually surrendered to the police at Woodlands Checkpoints the next morning.

On Tuesday (July 28), the Singaporean man, 53, pleaded guilty in the High Court to one charge of culpable homicide not amounting to murder.

He has since been diagnosed with having a delusional disorder (jealous type) at the time. Psychiatrists said that the condition impaired his judgement and made him unable to make rational decisions.

Psychiatrists also found that Krishnan had no concrete evidence that his wife of 28 years, 44-year-old Raithena Vaithena Samy, was cheating on him.

It turned out, however, that she was indeed having a secret affair with a male colleague until her death.

Krishnan has not been sentenced because the psychiatrists for the prosecution and those for the defence disagree on whether he was in a state of acute alcohol intoxication at the time, and how much this contributed to his offences.

Krishnan had drunk a bottle of gin before killing Raithena, and had been steadily drinking in the days leading up to the killing, his lawyers Kalidass Murugaiyan and Chua Hock Lu from Kalidass Law Corporation said.

A Newton hearing will be held over this issue on Tuesday and Wednesday. These hearings are held when facts that may materially affect the sentence are disputed, including conflicting medical reports.

Prosecutors are seeking 12 years’ jail, while Mr Kalidass and Mr Chua asked for no more than eight years.

Krishnan could be jailed up to 20 years or for life and fined. While culpable homicide carries the possibility of caning, those aged above 50 cannot be caned by law.

HE FELT HER ATTITUDE HAD CHANGED

The couple tied the knot when Reithena was 17 years old and their two children are now adults. 

He was a self-employed bus driver ferrying factory workers and tourists, while she worked as an operations executive.

Deputy Public Prosecutors (DPPs) Li Yihong and Han Ming Kuang told the court that Krishnan was “very possessive” of her throughout their relationship, with family members noticing that he would keep tabs on who she was with and where she went.

Their marriage began to deteriorate in December 2016. Krishnan felt that his wife’s attitude had changed, claiming that she often came home late in a drunken state, avoided him and gave excuses not to have sex with him.

In front of their family members, including their children and Reithena’s sister, he insisted that she was having an affair. This embarrassed Reithena and she soon told him that she wanted a divorce.

The truth was, she had begun an affair with her colleague in November 2016.

On one occasion in January 2017, when she went to Malacca in Malaysia for a company event, Krishnan suddenly showed up at her hotel and insisted that they meet.

In early October 2017, Krishnan retrieved a knife and threatened to kill himself after an argument. Reithena then moved out of the master bedroom and began sleeping in their daughter’s room.

Suspicious of his wife’s intentions, Krishnan planted an audio device there.

From then on, she returned to their home, a condominium unit in Loyang, only to sleep. She usually had dinner at her sister’s flat in Woodlands, and then her nephew would take her home each evening.

ASKED FAMILY TO FORGIVE HIM

On the night of Oct 26, 2017, Krishnan returned home and retrieved some audio recordings from the device.

Upon hearing Raithena mention another man’s name and laugh in the recordings, he believed that she was laughing at him and suspected that she was sleeping with the other man.

At about 9pm, Reithena returned home and got into the shower. By this time, Krishnan had drunk a full bottle of gin, which had an alcohol content of 43 per cent.

He took a knife and hammer and went to the bathroom. There, he stabbed her in the shower before dragging her to the master bedroom, leaving a trail of blood on the toiiet bowl seat and the floor.

He had wanted her to listen to the audio recordings on his laptop, but she struggled and pleaded with him to stop.

He stabbed her repeatedly again, including five times in the chest. When she fell onto the bed and began to scream, he strangled her until she fell silent and stopped moving.

Krishnan then began sending a string of phone text messages to Reithena’s nephew in a bid to delay him, as he was about to take Krishnan’s daughter home.

Krishnan also struck an electric socket beside the bedside table with the hammer, causing the electricity to trip and the whole unit to black out. 

Before he left the bedroom, he heard Reithena gasping for breath, DPP Li told the court.

In his haste to escape, he left the front door open and a trail of blood to the basement car park. He also sent text messages that read “forgave me” to other family members.

After driving out of Loyang Gardens, closed-circuit television footage captured him driving to an open-air car park near Pasir Ris Neighbourhood Police Centre. It is not known if he wanted to surrender then.

He then left, while continuing to send messages by phone to his nephew, before fleeing to Johor Baru and staying with his older brother there overnight.

The couple’s daughter returned home around midnight with her cousin and discovered her mother dead in their home. 

Police officers soon arrived and pronounced Reithena dead at the scene. Krishnan returned to Singapore at about 10.45am the next day and surrendered himself.

A pathologist found more than 20 stab wounds on Reithena’s face, abdomen and limbs. She also suffered 17 incised wounds on her scalp and limbs, along with other blunt force injuries.

COULD NOT COPE WITH WORK

Dr Cheow Enquan, a forensic psychiatrist from the Institute of Mental Health, examined Krishnan after his arrest and diagnosed him with delusional disorder.

While Krishnan did not have concrete evidence of his wife’s affair, the intensity and degree of his belief was evident from his actions, the psychiatrist observed. 

Krishnan was so preoccupied with this that he could not cope with his driving jobs and began drinking heavily in the weeks leading up to the killing.

While his mental disorder did not affect his ability to understand the nature of his actions, it greatly affected his ability to make rational decisions and exercise self-control, Dr Cheow said.

Krishnan reported that “his vision became blur like a fog” and he was unable to recall what had happened around the killing, the psychiatrist added. These were likely a result of acute alcohol intoxication, rather than his delusional disorder.

Dr Cheow also said that Krishnan may have suffered from an adjustment disorder with depressed mood at the time, though this did not amount to a major depressive disorder.

In a January 2019 report, Dr Cheow further stated that Krishnan had a low risk of reoffending but that this depended on whether he took his antipsychotic medication.

DPP Li argued that a spouse’s infidelity “can never be justification for violence”, while Mr Kalidass urged the court to consider that Krishnan showed genuine remorse by agreeing to go for treatment and cooperating with the authorities.