CNA – A woman in Singapore suffering from untreated schizophrenia listened to voices telling her that her eight-year-old daughter was an evil spirit and needed to be killed.
She stabbed her daughter to death in front of her younger daughter, who was four at the time. The woman, who is now 36, cannot be named due to a gag order protecting the victim’s identity.
She pleaded guilty yesterday to one count of murder, but was acquitted of the charge under Section 251 of the Criminal Procedure Code as she was of unsound mind at the time of the offence.
The judge ordered that she be kept in safe custody in prison and for the case to be reported to the minister. According to Section 252 of the Criminal Procedure Code, the minister may then order her to be confined in a psychiatric institution, prison or another suitable place of safe custody during the President’s pleasure.
The court heard that the Singaporean woman entered into a relationship with a man in 2007, and they had two daughters. They did not get married.
Around 2014, the woman’s boyfriend returned to China to continue working there, while the woman stayed in Singapore with her daughters.
Before travel restrictions were imposed in China and Singapore because of the COVID-19 pandemic, either the woman or her boyfriend would travel to visit each other. However, when the pandemic broke out, they would only video-call each other.
In 2020, the woman and her daughters moved to live with their family members in a unit in Geylang.
Their family members noticed that the woman behaved strangely between 2018 and August 2020. For instance, she suspected her phone and laptop were hacked, and that people were following her.
She was often suspicious that others would harm her, and would throw away food and drinks that her family members prepared, preventing her children from consuming them as well.
She also monitored her family members’ cooking to ensure no poison was added, the court heard. The woman stopped sleeping with the air-conditioning on, as she would fall asleep very deeply and fail to notice if someone wanted to harm her.
She said someone wanted to kill her and her daughters, and said she needed to protect them.
