Authors: Alex Josey
Questioned by the DPP, he said he did feel
the ground where Karthigesu was found. He did not see any dampness. Neither did
he smell urine.
Questioned by the Judge, P.C. Mohammed Noor
said that Karthigesu appeared to be unconscious. He said that Karthigesu was
wearing white trousers, white shoes and a batik shirt. He saw no bloodstains on
Karthigesu or on his clothing.
Re-examined by the DPP, P.C. Mohammed Noor
said he couldn’t say if Karthigesu was pretending or not. He saw no injuries on
the accused.
DPP: He appeared to be unconscious. He
could be pretending?
P.C. Mohammed Noor: Yes, he could be
pretending, but I don’t know.
The jury asked if P.C. Mohammed Noor smelt
any liquor when Karthigesu was lifted into the patrol car. Witness said he did
not smell any liquor.
Judge: Why did the four of you carry
him into the patrol car?
P.C. Mohammed Noor: To take him to the
hospital.
Judge: Why?
P.C. Mohammed Noor: Since he could not
stand all of us thought he was ill.
Another witness, Mrs Wong Ah Chai (alias Goh
Poh Yin), a staff nurse at the University Hospital, testified that in the
Accident Emergency Unit, Karthigesu was attended to promptly.
Nurse: I asked him what was wrong, took
his blood pressure and read his pulse.
Wong said she found Karthigesu’s blood
pressure to be normal, but his pulse rate was rapid: 120 beats per minute. The
normal rate is 60 to 80 per minute.
Wong said she examined Karthigesu’s body but
did not find any visible injury. She spoke to him, but there was no reply.
Wong said she then referred Karthigesu to Dr
S.N. Balakrishnan and was present when the doctor examined him. Karthigesu said
that he was hit by someone on the head when he stopped his car by the roadside
to urinate. Karthigesu kept on saying ‘Where is my wife?’ and ‘Where is my
Jean?’. Karthigesu also said that Jean was still in the car.
Wong: To calm him down Dr Balakrishnan
suggested we telephone the house to find out if Jean had gone home.
Karthigesu gave her the number and she
phoned the house in Klang, but was told by a man that Jean was not there. She
explained that Karthigesu had met with an accident, and asked him to come to
the hospital.
DPP: Was he in a state of shock?
Wong: No, No.
DPP: Was he pretending?
Wong: I don’t know.
DPP: Could he have been pretending?
Wong: Yes.
Answering a question from the Judge, Wong
said she did not examine his head. This was done by the doctor. Dr Balakrishnan
was then on a post-graduate course in the United Kingdom.
Judge Azmi said Dr Balakrishnan was a crucial
witness to both the defence and prosecution.
Dr Balakrishnan did however leave a
deposition which had been recorded in the magistrate’s court during the
prelimary inquiry. The magistrate, Wan Adnan bin Mohammed who conducted the
inquiry, told the Court he recorded Dr Balakrishnan’s evidence on 22 August
1979. He read out the deposition. Dr Balakrishnan said when he saw Karthigesu
he was lying on a trolley. He was a bit drowsy but conscious and rational.
Karthigesu told him that he had been to a party and on the way home he stopped
his car to pass urine when some men knocked him on the head and he became
unconscious.
Dr Balakrishnan said Karthigesu kept on
asking for his wife. He said that he had probably lost his identity card. Dr
Balakrishnan said Karthigesu did not have a scratch or lump, and if he had
received a blow on the head which knocked him unconscious, the blow must have
been severe. There ought to have been some swelling and it would take 13–18
days to disappear.
Dr Balakrishnan said that he was of the
opinion that it was highly improbable that Karthigesu was knocked unconscious.
If he was he would have fallen down, and that would have resulted in further
injuries, particularly if he had fallen on a metal road. Under
cross-examination the doctor agreed that Karthigesu’s pulse rate of 120 was
very high and it could have been due to a number of reasons like excitement,
injuries, physical exercise or loss of blood.
Dr Balakrishnan said after he completed his
examination he sent Karthigesu to the surgical unit where Dr Yahya Sofi bin
Hussein examined him. Dr Yahya reported that there was tenderness in both the
parietal and occipital regions (in the head).
The DPP applied to the Court to place on
record the deposition of Dr Balakrishnan through Wan Adnan.
Mr Ponnudurai, for the defence, objected.
The Judge, quoting the law, over-ruled him. The DPP’s application was allowed.
In the box, Dr Yahya said that on examining
Karthigesu he found there was pain and tenderness in the head but he could not
find any haematoma, laceration or abrasion on the skull. There was no injury in
any part of the body. He said he asked Karthigesu what happened and Karthigesu
said he had stopped his car to pass urine when he was set upon by strangers.
Beyond that he could not remember anything. He appeared rational and well
orientated to person and place.
Questioned by the DPP, the doctor said
tenderness was something which could not be seen. It is determined by feeling
the affected parts and the patient’s reactions. If a patient told him that a
certain part of his head was tender he would not be able to say if he was
pretending. “If the accused had bluffed me there would be no way of knowing.”
Karthigesu had complained of tenderness on both sides of his head. It was
unlikely that he was hit on both sides.
Dr Yahya said in his opinion a certain
amount offeree would be necessary to knock a person unconscious, but it might
not necessarily result in a swelling. In a majority of cases there would be
some form of swelling, laceration or abrasion, but there were some exceptions.
If the accused, who weighed about 160 lbs, was standing when he was knocked on
his head and he fell unconscious, there would be injuries on his body depending
on the direction of the fall and which part of the body hit the ground first.
Crossed-examined by Mr Fernandez, Dr Yahya
agreed that Karthigesu had a pulse rate of 120 and was drowsy and that would
suggest ‘something abnormal was going on’. He gave him five days’ medical leave
on compassionate grounds to settle his affairs. Karthigesu appeared to be
depressed (he thought he had lost his wife). Dr Yahya said Karthigesu had been
under observation at the hospital for seven hours, and he personally saw him
for about an hour. When he discharged Karthigesu he told him to return
immediately to the hospital if there was any vomiting, headache or drowsiness.
Judge: Did he return?
Dr Yahya: No, my Lord.
Dr Yahya said he was present when DSP Godwin
Anthony informed Karthigesu of Jean’s death. He asked Karthigesu whether he
would like to talk about it. He answered: “Oh, those bastards.”
The DPP asked him about the pulse rate.
Would it go up if someone had done something wrong?
Dr Yahya: Yes.
Replying to another question, Dr Yahya said
that Karthigesu talked to him after he was told of Jean’s death. Karthigesu
seemed to be talking to himself. Questioned by the jury, the witness said no
urine test was carried out to ascertain intoxication. When the jury asked what
sort of object could cause unconsciousness without leaving any abrasion or
contusion, the doctor said he did not know of any. Answering another question
the doctor said that the blood pressure of a person under stress or highly
excited would be higher than normal.
Replying to questions by the Judge, Dr Yahya
said that Karthigesu’s story about being hit in the head and being unconscious
was not consistent with his findings.
The next witness was Dr Khoo Soo Cheng, a
dental surgeon. He said Karthigesu had been a patient of his five or six years
ago. He made him a movable denture. It had three sets of clasps to clasp on to
the natural teeth to give retention to the denture so that it would not fall.
DPP: If the accused had this denture in
his mouth when standing up to urinate and if he was knocked on the head would the
denture fall or fly from the mouth?
Dr Khoo: In my opinion it is very
unlikely, unless the blow was great enough to cause an injury at the point of
impact, or render a person unconscious. The denture could easily be removed by
hand.
He disagreed with a suggestion by defence
counsel that the dentures could have been removed by the tongue.
Answering another question, Dr Khoo said he
would not know if Karthigesu’s girl friend would object to him wearing the
denture while he was kissing her. Neither would he know whether Karthigesu
liked wearing a denture when kissing a girl. He agreed it was possible that
Karthigesu took out his denture and put it in his pocket on the night in
question.
DPP: Is it necessary to take out the denture when kissing or making
love?
Dr Khoo: No, my Lord.
Jean’s Brother Testifies
Andrew Brian Perera, the 28-year-old
brother of Jean, told the Court the following day, that Karthigesu some time in
December, 1978, took a batch of Jean’s love-letters from Dr Warnasurya to
Kajang where Perera lived with his father and mother. Perera stopped reading
the letters when he found they were of a very intimate nature. He did not allow
his mother to read the letters because of their content.
Perera said he told Karthigesu he had no
business to read the letters and advised him to put them back where he had
found them. He added: “In my family it is considered rude to read other
people’s letters.”
Perera said Karthigesu became very angry and
shouted that he would kill Dr Warnasurya. He called the doctor a bastard.
Karthigesu said the doctor had the cheek to call him a green-eyed monster. He
wanted to make Jean a Muslim. Perera said Dr Warnasurya was the reason he would
not allow Jean to visit Sri Lanka that month. Instead Jean and her sister, Merlyn,
went to Thailand.
Perera said his sister Jean had three
children—a son Damendra, and two girls, Rohini and Malini. Since her husband’s
death she had lived in Klang with her in-laws.
Questioned by the DPP, witness said
Karthigesu was also known as Selvam. The witness was then shown four love
letters which Jean had written to Karthigesu while both lived in the same
house.
Perera said he thought Jean did not have
enough privacy; that was why she had to correspond with Karthigesu while living
in the same house.
Perera said he was aware Jean and her late
husband had taken a joint loan from the Government to build a house in
Damansara. After her husband died she lived in Klang but planned to move to her
own house when it was completed.
Answering another question, Perera said Jean
was on holiday in Thailand when Karthigesu brought the letters over for him to
read. Karthigesu told them he got the letters from a cupboard in his mother’s
house where Jean and he were living.
Perera said he went to the hospital early in
the morning the day after the tragedy, when he was allowed to see Karthigesu in
the observation ward. “He told me he left Abad Hotel at 10:40
pm
with Jean and somewhere along the
by-pass he stopped his car to ease himself. While he was standing and urinating
he was knocked on the back of the head with a crash helmet. He fell forward
unconscious.”
Perera said Karthigesu believed that more
than one person attacked him. Otherwise he could have fought back. The next
thing he knew was that he was in hospital.
Cross-examined by Mr Ponnudurai, Perera
denied he had come to Court to tell a pack of lies and to commit perjury.
Mr Ponnudurai: You are here to convince
the Court that your sister wanted to leave Klang because she could not get
along with her mother-in-law?
Perera: Yes, my Lord.
Answering another question, Perera said he
knew that Jean was drawing a pension since her husband’s death. He also knew
that Jean paid a monthly contribution for the maintenance of her children.
Mr Ponnudurai: Do you know how much?
Perera: I do not know.
Counsel referred him to Jean’s diary where
it stated that Jean received a pension of $654.75 and $350 was for her
mother-in-law.
Perera said that after he had identified
Jean’s body and made arrangements for the funeral, he went to Klang accompanied
by Karthigesu, and James Ritchie, a friend and reporter. ASP Ramli had asked
him to collect Jean’s identity card and a photo of her.