On 19 October 2005, 75-year-old Wee Keng Wah () was found dead at the foot of her HDB block in Chai Chee, Singapore. On that same day, her 26-year-old Indonesian maid Barokah was arrested and charged with murder. It was later found through investigations that Barokah murdered Wee after the latter caught her sneaking out to meet her lover and Wee threatened to sack her, and Barokah thus had a fight with Wee before pushing her out of the flat window and leading to Wee's fall to death.
Later, after a psychiatrist found that Barokah was suffering from diminished responsibility as a result of depression and dependent personality disorder, her charge of murder was reduced to manslaughter, and Barokah was sentenced to life imprisonment. Later, due to new psychiatric evidence, Barokah's case was approved for a re-trial but eventually, Barokah's life sentence was re-imposed after the trial court found that it was the only suitable sentence to be meted out in light of Barokah's psychiatric state and the cold-blooded nature of the crime. The re-trial verdict was later upheld by the Court of Appeal, which dismissed Barokah's second appeal against her life sentence.
Murder investigations On 19 October 2005, an elderly woman was found dead at the ground floor of a HDB block in Chai Chee, Singapore. On the same date, an Indonesian maid was arrested for the suspected murder of the woman, who was the maid's employer.
The deceased elderly woman was identified as 75-year-old Wee Keng Wah, who was a resident of the block where she was discovered dead. At the time of her death, Wee, nicknamed Hainan Aunty (海南嫂 Hǎinán Sǎo), was survived by her husband, two sons and one daughter. Wee was living together with her 78-year-old husband Lee Tang Seng (李东成 Lǐ Dōngchéng) in a ninth-floor unit of the same HDB block, while their children were living elsewhere in Singapore and married with children. The maid, who was reportedly married with a son, was alleged to be responsible for pushing Wee to her death, after she was caught sneaking out to meet a man. It was revealed that the maid has previously worked for two families before being hired by Wee, but she switched families within one year before she worked for Wee. Her diary was also seized by police as evidence.
An autopsy was conducted on the victim and the pathologist (who was unidentified) revealed that there were multiple bruises and injuries were discovered on Wee's body, and her face was "flattened" from the fall. These injuries were consistent with Wee having fallen from a height. Several fingernail marks were also found on the elderly woman's neck, implying that Wee had been strangled before she fell, and the various injuries Wee sustained during her fall was sufficient in the ordinary course of nature to cause death. A search at the flat also revealed spots of blood on the floor and bedsheets in Wee's bedroom, suggesting that a fight had taken place and the window grille also did not have signs of contact with Wee's body, which also ruled out the possibility of suicide. Swabs were made on the maid's hands, which discovered traces of Wee's DNA on her fingernails and hands.
On 21 October 2005, Wee's 26-year-old Indonesian maid Barokah was officially charged with murder in the Subordinate Courts of Singapore, and if found guilty of murder in Singapore, she faced the death penalty. Barokah was first placed under police detention for a week to assist in investigations, before the order was extended to one more week due to the police requiring more time to complete investigations.
On 2 November 2005, Barokah returned to court, and she was ordered to be placed under psychiatric remand for three weeks at Changi Women's Prison while awaiting trial for her late employer's murder. On that same day, the police also returned to Wee's flat to collect evidence, including an air conditioner. On 23 November 2005, the police returned to the crime scene a second time to re-enact the crime, and used a mannequin to re-enact Wee's fall to her death.
On 25 October 2005, Wee's funeral took place, and over a hundred friends and relatives attended the wake.
Background of Barokah
Born in Central Java, Indonesia on 15 May 1979, Barokah, who goes by one name, was the youngest of several children in her family. Her father was an odd-job labourer and her mother was a rice field worker, and the family lived in a village in Central Java. Barokah, who underwent religious studies in school until the third year of secondary school, was married at the age of 16 in 1995, and her husband Isnaini Mislani worked as a labourer in Malaysia. In August 2003, Barokah had an affair with another married Indonesian man and gave birth to a baby boy, who was later entrusted under the care of a friend after Barokah refused the man's offer to be his second wife, and this refusal also led to the end of the affair. Barokah also subsequently discovered that her husband was also having an affair and she was emotionally affected by it.
In June or July 2005, she met Ali, a Bangladeshi man who befriended her, and she began an intimate relationship with Ali, and she became pregnant with Ali's child. While she was held in remand for murdering Wee Keng Wah, Barokah gave birth to a daughter on 3 July 2006, although many sources at first wrongly stated that Barokah gave birth in May 2006.
Barokah worked for a total of three families in Singapore before she was hired by Wee. The first was a Malay family living in Bukit Batok, where Barokah had worked for 16 months between January 2000 and April 2001. The second was a family living in Frankel Estate in September 2004, and it lasted for six months. Barokah's third employer was a resident of a condominium in the eastern part of Singapore in March 2005, but it also lasted for a few months. At one point, in 2003, Barokah also worked for a family in Malaysia for one year.
On 20 September 2005, Barokah was hired by Wee Keng Wah, who was her fourth employer in Singapore. Wee hired Barokah to take care of her husband Lee Tang Seng, who suffered from multiple health problems, like Parkinson's disease, weak limbs, severely impaired hearing, diabetes, hypertension and ischaemic heart disease.
Account of the murder The following was the official version of the murder of Wee Keng Wah, based on Barokah's confession and other evidence related to the crime.
During the early morning hours of 19 October 2005, Barokah sneaked out of the flat to meet up with her Bangladeshi boyfriend Ali. After the meeting, Barokah returned to the flat. However, she was caught red-handed by Wee Keng Wah, who discovered her absence from the flat prior to Barokah's return. Angered by Barokah's actions, Wee harshly scolded Barokah and threatened to fire her and send her back to Indonesia. In defiance, Barokah challenged the older woman to send her back to Indonesia. The commotion grew heated and it escalated into a fight between Wee and Barokah.
Not knowing that his wife and maid were having a fight, Wee's husband Lee Tang Seng overheard the commotion and he rushed to the bedroom of Wee. By then, Barokah had overpowered Wee, who fell unconscious but was still breathing and alive at the end of the fight. When Lee probed Barokah on what happened, Barokah feigned ignorance and claimed she had no idea what happened to Wee (whom she lied might have fell down), and even slapped her employer's face to try to revive her. After Lee left the flat to seek help from one of his neighbours Richard Chew Jhing Liang, Barokah pretended to go out with Wee's husband but she returned to the flat, and carried Wee's body on the bed first before she took it to the elderly woman's bedroom window, and threw the unconscious Wee out of the window. As a result, 75-year-old Wee Keng Wah died after falling nine storeys to the ground. Prior to the fall, Barokah had strangled Wee before throwing her off.
After Lee returned to the flat with Richard Chew, Barokah claimed that Wee was not inside the flat, and she even said that Wee must have gone out for morning exercise like she usually did. Later, Wee's youngest son Lee Seng Lim (李成林 Lǐ Chénglín), his wife Lim Yock Hoon and their two sons also arrived at the flat after his father called him, and they also searched for Wee. Similarly, when she was probed by Lee Seng Lim about his mother's whereabouts, Barokah feigned ignorance and said she did not know, and also stated Wee might have gone out for morning exercise. After Wee's body was discovered later that morning, Barokah was brought in for questioning due to the police suspecting her in light of her numerous inconsistencies in her account, which led to her arrest.
Trial of Barokah In July 2006, Barokah's case was transferred to the High Court, where she was set to stand trial for killing her employer Wee Keng Wah.
Before the start of her trial, Barokah's murder charge was reduced to a lesser offence of culpable homicide not amounting to murder, also known as manslaughter in Singapore's legal terms, and the reduction of the charge allowed Barokah to no longer face the death penalty for murdering Wee. The stipulated penalty for manslaughter was either life imprisonment or up to ten years in prison, in addition to possible caning or a fine. According to Dr Tommy Tan, a government psychiatrist, Barokah suffered from both depression and a dependent personality disorder that draws her to men, and the combination of these disorders were sufficient to impair her mental responsibility at the time of the murder. Therefore, Barokah's murder charge was reduced on the grounds of diminished responsibility. The defence's psychiatric expert Dr R Nagulendran, a psychiatrist in private practice, similarly diagnosed Barokah with both dependent personality disorder and depression.
On 26 November 2007, Barokah, who was represented by Senior Counsel Harpreet Singh Nehal (plus Kelly Fan and Wendell Wong), pleaded guilty to the reduced charge at the High Court, and her sentencing was carried out that same day. The trial judge, Justice Tay Yong Kwang, gave his full grounds of decision on 11 February 2008 to explain his verdict on sentence, finding that the victim concerned in the present case was a vulnerable person with an advanced age of 75 and also defenceless during the maid's attack on her. Justice Tay also explained that while the fight between Wee and Barokah was spontaneous and unpremeditated, and there was no prior intention on Barokah's part to cause death, he nevertheless found that there was a huge time lapse between the first assault and Barokah's subsequent decision to push the unconscious and helpless Wee down from the ninth storey, and she would have had time to recover and reflect on the incident after Wee was rendered unconscious from the fight. This lethal decision made Justice Tay conclude that Barokah was a dangerous and cold-blooded killer, and even with her depression, she was still able to fully understand right and wrong and also had a collected thought process since she took steps to deny her involvement.