Roshdi bin Abdullah Altway (1959 – 10 April 2025) was a Singaporean convicted murderer and drug trafficker. Roshdi first gained notoriety in 1993 for the murder of a narcotics officer. Roshdi was charged with murdering Rajab Mohamed, an inspector of the Central Narcotics Bureau (CNB), by battering the officer to death with a granite mortar in 1993. Although Roshdi stated in his defence that he acted in self-defence when he mistook the inspector for trying to reach for his revolver and harm him, Roshdi was nonetheless found guilty of murdering Inspector Rajab and sentenced to death after his defence was rejected.
In 1994, upon his appeal, Roshdi's claims of self-defence were accepted, and therefore his death sentence was commuted to ten years’ jail for manslaughter, in addition to six years' jail and 12 strokes of the cane for illegal possession of a revolver and six bullets.
After his release however, Roshdi re-offended and he was sentenced in 2007 to 12 years' jail and ten strokes of the cane for trafficking Subutex tablets and for drug consumption. After his parole and release from this sentence, Roshdi was caught for capital diamorphine trafficking in 2016, and he was sentenced to death a second time after failing to substantiate his defence of safekeeping but not trafficking the 78.77g of diamorphine. After losing his appeals against his second death sentence, Roshdi was hanged in Changi Prison on 10 April 2025.
Personal life Roshdi bin Abdullah Altway was born in Singapore in 1959. He had at least one sister in his family. Roshdi was married sometime during his adulthood, but it is not known if he had any children.
Roshdi worked as a salesman prior to his arrest in March 1993 for murder, and some sources also described Roshdi's occupation as a businessman. He also had previous records of drug consumption, and was detained under the Criminal Law Act at one point. In 1990, Roshdi was arrested by the Central Narcotics Bureau (CNB) for allegedly selling drugs, but he subsequently became an informant of the CNB (with the codename "786") after agreeing to the request of Inspector Rajab Mohamed, who was in charge of the investigations in Roshdi's case. Reportedly, Roshdi and Inspector Rajab befriended each other and they operated as bookies at the Turf Club, and both men often place bets against each other. Roshdi reportedly also lent Inspector Rajab about S$40,000 in relation to the bets they made. This friendship however, lasted for merely three years before the two men fell out over monetary issues and it ended with the murder of Inspector Rajab Mohamed.
Murder of Inspector Rajab Mohamed (1993)
Arrest and investigations
On the night of 8 March 1993, Inspector Rajab Mohamed was last seen alive by his wife, who saw him responding to a pager call at his home, and he also told his wife that he was going to meet his informant at Serangoon North. Aside from this, he called his office and asked his men to stand by for a drug bust and he would make a second call. However, the call never came, and Inspector Rajab did not return home later that night. A day after his disappearance, Inspector Rajab's 32-year-old wife Masita Sanoesia, a Singapore Coast Guard corporal who was then three months pregnant, reported her husband missing to the police, and both Inspector Rajab's family and friends helped to search for Inspector Rajab in some parts of Singapore, and just five minutes before the discovery of Inspector Rajab's death, his sister tried to contact a newspaper to publicly appeal for information of her whereabouts.
Meanwhile, the police investigated the disappearance of Inspector Rajab, and through the phone records, they identified Roshdi Abdullah Altway as the same informant whom the missing inspector was meeting on that night, and arrested him on suspicion of being involved in the disappearance of Inspector Rajab. After his arrest on 10 March 1993, Roshdi confessed to the police that he murdered Inspector Rajab.
On the night of 11 March 1993, Roshdi led the police to a Tampines multi-storey carpark, where the decomposing body of 35-year-old Inspector Rajab Mohamed was found in the back-seat of his car. At the time when Inspector Rajab's corpse was found, he was speculated to have died for more than two days, and his skull was found to have been crushed, purportedly caused by blunt force trauma caused by multiple blows inflicted with a blunt object. According to Dr Wee Keng Poh, a forensic pathologist who performed an autopsy on the victim, there were multiple skull fractures on his head and a large amount of force was exerted in inflicting the blows that caused these injuries, which were sufficient in the ordinary course of nature to cause death. At the same time, Inspector Rajab's revolver and ammunition, consisting of five or six bullets, were recovered from the Ang Mo Kio flat of Roshdi's mother-in-law. Police investigations classified Inspector Rajab's death as murder, and on 13 March 1993, 34-year-old Roshdi Abdullah Altway was charged with the murder of Inspector Rajab, which was confirmed to have taken place on 8 March 1993, three days before his corpse was discovered.
Background information revealed that Inspector Rajab first joined the Central Narcotics Bureau (CNB) on 1 July 1977 as an assistant narcotics officer, and after completing his training at the police academy, Inspector Rajab was posted to the Supervision Division, and in February 1983, he was promoted to a sergeant and he rose to become an inspector in September 1987. At the time he died, Inspector Rajab was in charge of the harbour and railway team, and was known to be a dedicated and hard-working officer. Inspector Rajab Mohamed, who left behind a pregnant wife and two children (a four-year-old son Mohd Ariff and a seven-year-old daughter Nur Shaikhah), was believed to be the first CNB officer to be murdered while on the line of duty. Over 200 CNB officers had attended Inspector Rajab's funeral, and neighbours all described Inspector Rajab and his wife as good people who treated others well. Eight former drug addicts, one of whom knew Inspector Rajab, offered a special prayer for Inspector Rajab. Notably, of all his former cases, Inspector Rajab took charge of investigating Hongkonger Elke Tsang Kai-mong for drug trafficking; Tsang, who stood trial after Inspector Rajab's death, was convicted and hanged for trafficking 4.1307 kg of diamorphine in 1994.
Roshdi's murder trial On 15 November 1993, 34-year-old Roshdi Abdullah Altway claimed trial to one count of murder, one count of illegally possessing a revolver and one count of illegally possessing six live rounds of ammunition. The prosecution was led by Mathavan Devadas and Chua Eu Jin, while Roshdi was represented by Singa Retnam during his trial. The trial was presided over by Judicial Commissioner Kan Ting Chiu of the High Court. Roshdi's joint trial for murder and the non-capital firearm charges was known to be unusual in Singapore, where a person charged for murder or other offences attracting the death penalty cannot be tried in the same court for any other non-capital charges, which were normally held in abeyance until the end of the capital trial.
The trial court was told of Inspector Rajab's friendship with Roshdi, and it was further adduced that Roshdi had owed about S$4,000 to Inspector Rajab as a result of the bets they made together. Based on Roshdi's statements, after meeting up at Roshdi's Serangoon North flat, there was an argument between Inspector Rajab and Roshdi over the debt, and this escalated into a fight when Inspector Rajab strangled Roshdi and punched him on the stomach, and while he endured the blows, Roshdi noticed that Inspector Rajab was reaching for his bag, and presuming that Inspector Rajab was trying to draw his revolver and hurt him, Roshdi managed to pick up a granite chilli mortar to repeatedly bludgeon Inspector Rajab on the head multiple times, and this led to the death of Inspector Rajab. Overall, Roshdi's defence was that he killed Inspector Rajab while acting in self-defence, and he killed Inspector Rajab during a fight, and he insisted he never had the intention to commit murder.
After the fight, Roshdi, who wrapped up Inspector Rajab's body with cloth, found the body too heavy to carry and hence called his wife and enlisted her help (although it took a lot of begging and pleading to convince his reluctant wife to help him) to dispose of Inspector Rajab's body by placing it in the backseat of Inspector Rajab's car and abandoning it at a carpark in Tampines. Roshdi also subsequently took away Inspector Rajab's revolver and bullets and hid it at his mother-in-law's flat, and he never intended to have any use for the revolver, which he thought of returning to a police station before he was ultimately arrested.
On 27 November 1993, Judicial Commissioner Kan Ting Chiu delivered his verdict. In his judgement, Judicial Commissioner Kan rejected Roshdi's defence of having killed Inspector Rajab in self-defence during a fight, pointing out that Roshdi was inconsistent in his claims of whether Inspector Rajab had drawn his revolver before or after Roshdi used the chilli mortar to bludgeon Inspector Rajab on the head, and Roshdi gave multiple versions of the murder to the police and other witnesses, which raised doubts over the reliability of his evidence. Noting that Roshdi did not tell the police that Inspector Rajab was the aggressor at first hand, Judicial Commissioner Kan also cited the evidence that Roshdi had been subjected to a medical examination after his arrest, and he never mentioned about being hit on the stomach despite having told the doctor that he was strangled by Inspector Rajab, and for these inconsistencies in Roshdi's testimony and statements, Judicial Commissioner Kan hence ruled that Roshdi did not satisfactorily prove that he acted in self-defence and caused Inspector Rajab's death due to a sudden fight. Given the fact that Roshdi admitted to using the chilli mortar to repeatedly batter Inspector Rajab until he died, such that the injuries caused were sufficient in the ordinary course of nature to cause death, Judicial Commissioner Kan found that there were sufficient grounds to return with a verdict of murder in Roshdi's case.
Therefore, 34-year-old Roshdi Abdullah Altway was found guilty of murder, and sentenced to death by hanging. At the same time, Roshdi was also convicted of the remaining two charges of possessing Inspector Rajab's revolver and six bullets, and he was therefore sentenced to concurrent sentences of six years' jail and six strokes of the cane for each of the two charges, although Roshdi was not allowed to serve both these jail terms as long as his death sentence was not commuted.
Death row, appeal and reprieve During his time on death row, Roshdi was called as a witness in the murder trial of his former cellmate Somporn Chinpakdhee, a former Thai construction worker who was charged with murdering his compatriot and colleague Kulap Nophakhun in 1993. Roshdi had testified to support Somporn's claim that he had been abused and forced to confess to the murder during police interrogation, and he denied that he was lying during the prosecution's cross-examination, stating that he had nothing to gain or lose since he was not a friend of Somporn and he himself was already condemned to death row. Eventually, Somporn was acquitted of murder in August 1994, the same month when Roshdi's appeal was due to be heard by the Court of Appeal.