Source: The Straits Times

AS PROSECUTORS yesterday pressed for a 27-year-old man to be convicted of murdering his daughter, the presiding judge questioned whether Sallehan Allaudin had the intention to bash the toddler so badly that she was likely to die from her injuries.

Justice Lee Seiu Kin said he was troubled by the fact that, by all accounts, the accused was a loving father to 23-month-old Natalie Nikie Alisyia Sallehan. However, at the end of the hearing he reserved judgment, saying that the case, which he described as “unusual”, deserved a considered decision. A date for the verdict has not yet been set.

Sallehan, a cleaner, is accused of murdering Nikie on the evening of Jan 6 last year at the family’s Boon Lay flat. He and his wife had gone out that day to buy a birthday present for Nikie, leaving her and her two younger sisters – one just over a year old and the other two months old – at home.

When the couple returned, Nikie was eating and playing with her father’s cigarettes. Sallehan said he scolded Nikie, pulled her to the kitchen and began slapping and punching her. An autopsy found that Nikie died from a tear in a major vein, likely from a hard punch, kick or stomp.

In court, Sallehan claimed the defence of grave and sudden provocation. He said that a combination of Nikie’s loud cries, stress over the family’s financial difficulties and suspicions about his wife’s fidelity caused him to lose his self-control.

The prosecution yesterday argued that Sallehan had not lost his self-control and, in fact, had made a conscious and deliberate decision to teach Nikie a lesson. By Sallehan’s own account, he had pulled the girl into the kitchen so that the neighbours would not hear her cries, used “half his strength” to hit her and chose to punch her in the back because it was the strongest part of the body.

But Sallehan’s lawyer, Mr N. Kanagavijayan, argued that his client could not have forseen that his punches would result in a rupture of the vein.

The rupturing of the vein was the result of an unfortunate turn of events, said the lawyer, noting that even the forensic pathologist himself had never seen such an injury.

Sallehan faces the death penalty if convicted.

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