A maid from Myanmar has been sentenced to life in prison for killing her employer’s 70-year-old mother-in-law from India, a media report said on Sunday.
Sin Mar Nuve was found guilty of first degree murder for intentionally inflicting multiple fatal stab wounds on the victim.
Mar Neu was reportedly convicted on July 4 after admitting to stabbing the victim 26 times in a rage after the woman threatened to send him back to the agent. The Straits Times.
The report said the maid was 17 years old when she arrived in Singapore to work on Jan 5, 2018, but her passport listed her age as 23 — the minimum age to work as a domestic worker in Singapore.
Four months later, she began working on her third home — for a couple and their two teenage daughters.
Her latest employer, the financial controller, identified by the court as Mr. S, was hired because his family’s maid of the past four years was returning to the Philippines.
By her own accounts, Sin Mar Neuve had no complaints about her working conditions and had no problems interacting with Mr S’s family and her agents.
She woke up at 5.30am and went to bed around 11pm and made multiple phone calls to her relatives in Myanmar.
Part of her SGD 450 monthly salary went to repay her loan to her maid agency.
About two weeks into her employment, her employer’s mother-in-law arrived from India on May 26, 2018 to stay with her family for a month, but she found it difficult to adjust to the elderly woman.
The old woman began to beat the maid to get her attention or to rebuke her. Sin Mar Nue said that the woman was beaten when she did not understand what to do.
In the beginning, the old woman used her knuckles to knock the maid on the head and back two to three times a day on average. She then started using things like bowls.
The mother-in-law also started going back when the maid accidentally molested her on several occasions.
On the morning of June 25, 2018, the two women were alone in the house when the elderly woman became upset after causing an object to fall on the maid’s feet and missing her instructions.
As the older woman lay down on the couch to watch television, she announced that the maid would be going to the agent tomorrow.
Since S was already her third employer, Sin Mar Nue understood that this would result in her being deported back to her home country in debt.
Shaking with anger, she took a knife and stabbed the elderly woman 26 times.
After the woman stopped moving, the maid ransacked one of the bedrooms in the flat and broke the lock of the cupboard and took out the items.
She washed the knife and left it in the kitchen, changed her dress and took one of her bags. She left the flat, taking some money and the Z-Link card that was placed on top of the microwave oven.
She went to her maid agency in Choa Chu Kang to pick up her passport, but left when she realized the staff were going to call the employer.
For the next five hours, she wandered Singapore by bus, MRT and on foot.
She bought bottles of mineral water and ate at a hawker center before finally taking a taxi back to the agency. The woman was arrested after the employees informed the police about her return.
After dropping her off, the cabbie found a bag containing SGD 114 in the back seat and tried to give it back to her, but she denied the bag was hers. A forensic examination later revealed that some of the notes were stained with blood.
After her arrest, Sin Mar Nuve initially denied killing the old woman, blaming the crime on two men and describing the fictional assailants in some detail.