Fleeting reprieve for death row brothers
PETALING JAYA: The execution of two brothers, scheduled for yesterday but was stayed at the eleventh hour, is now to proceed.
The Malaysian Bar said brothers Rames and Suthar Batumalai, who were found guilty of murder in April 2010, would be executed at Kajang Prison.
Its president, Steven Thiru, said lawyers for the brothers were, however, still exploring other avenues for clemency.
“Sufficient time and opportunity must be given for them to exhaust this fresh ground before any sentence is meted out.
“The brothers must not be denied due process and the execution of the death penalty must never be rushed or expedited,” Thiru said in a statement late yesterday.
Rames, 44, and Suthar, 39, had on Thursday submitted a clemency application to the Negri Sembilan Pardons Board through the firm Haresh Mahadevan & Co.
The family was told by the Prisons Department that the executions had been postponed. Haresh Mahadevan said family members told him that no clemency application had been filed previously, but the prison and state legal assistant suggested that there had been one.
“Since there is no bar to file a fresh one, they need to hear and dispose of it before they can go ahead with any execution,” he said, adding that since the brothers were not present for any clemency application, they were deprived of their right to be heard.
“We are of the view that whether it is a decision for or against the petitioners, they ought to be given the right to be heard,” he said.
The brothers were moved on Wednesday from separate detention facilities in Bentong Prison to Kajang Prison where their executions were to take place.
Twenty-six family members spent about five hours with the brothers on Thursday.
Rames and Suthar had been convicted of murdering mechanic R. Krishnan, 27, at Kilometre 13 of the Labu-Port Dickson road on Feb 4, 2006.