On 11 August 2017, at an unspecified location in Singapore, a five-year-old Singaporean girl, whose first name was Ayeesha, died in her flat (apartment) after being severely starved and abused by her biological father. Before her death, Ayeesha and her younger brother had both been confined naked inside the toilet of her father's flat for ten months and ill-treated for about two years; Ayeesha's brother survived the abuse despite the extensive trauma and injuries he endured. Ayeesha's father was arrested and charged with murder, and also faced 25 counts of abusing the two children.
The father's murder trial began in May 2023. In April 2024, he pleaded guilty to manslaughter and child abuse and was sentenced to an "unprecedented" 34 years and six months' imprisonment and 12 strokes of the cane; the identities of him and Ayeesha were suppressed to protect his son. The imprisonment term was increased to 35 years in July 2024 after the father was found to be medically unfit for caning. On 11 July 2025, the Court of Appeal dismissed an appeal by him and replaced his 35-year sentence with life imprisonment.
Background and abuse Ayeesha was born in Singapore in 2012, and she had one younger brother who was a year her junior. Her father, who separated from Ayeesha's biological mother at one point, remarried another woman who became Ayeesha's stepmother, and had three children with her. A daughter from a previous marriage of Ayeesha's stepmother also lived with the couple. Background information of Ayeesha's father revealed that he was trained in silat, taekwondo and aikido. He formerly worked as an auxiliary police officer from 2003 to 2016. From 2016 to April 2017, Ayeesha's father worked in a fast food restaurant, and he was jobless since then. In 2015, Ayeesha's father faced financial difficulties and he had to cut down on his purchase of food and diapers. Ayeesha's father and stepmother also reduced the children's meals to twice a day. After the divorce of Ayeesha's biological parents, both Ayeesha and her brother were initially placed in foster care in June 2014, before they were returned to live with their father in early 2015. Following this, members of a family welfare centre would regularly monitor the welfare of the children and check up on them, and the father even took both children for a counselling session at the centre in May 2015. However, since then, the children had not been seen by any case officer and the father did not send them for schooling, and he often lied to the welfare workers that the children were under the care of his mother or other relatives.
Ayeesha's father and his wife began to abuse both Ayeesha and her biological younger brother in December 2015. Due to their father decreasing their daily meal intake, Ayeesha and her brother started to eat their own faeces to ease their hunger and even played with them, which resulted in them being hit. From February to October 2016, the couple confined the two siblings in a designated naughty corner, which was a narrow space between a bookshelf and a wardrobe to prevent them from escaping, and a CCTV camera was also set up to keep the two children under surveillance. The children, who were continually abused by their father daily, were only allowed to come out of the naughty corner to have their meals or shower. Starting from October 2016, both Ayeesha and her brother were confined naked inside the toilet, and they were only allowed to come out whenever it was mealtime or the adults wanted to use the toilet. One excerpt of the CCTV footage from Ayeesha's one-room flat also showed the two siblings wearing only their diapers when they were locked up in their former naughty corner prior to their confinement in the toilet. The confinement of Ayeesha and her brother in the toilet would last for ten months before the death of Ayeesha in August 2017.
Only some instances of the abuse was revealed publicly when the case came into light. One documented instance of the abuse took place on 27 March 2016, when Ayeesha's father had violently assaulted Ayeesha by hitting her for at least 86 times, and the callous and relentless assault lasted for 16 minutes, and the whole abuse was shown on the CCTV footage captured inside the flat. Ayeesha's father was reportedly angered at Ayeesha for smearing her faeces on the wall and while changing her diapers, it incensed him so much that he brutally assaulted her out of rage. Additionally, Ayeesha's father had also repeatedly slapped the girl, as well as punching, caning and kicking her, and he also pulled her body up by holding her hair before punching her. Another incident happened on 27 August 2016, when Ayeesha's father repeatedly used a cane to hit both Ayeesha and her brother inside the living room.
In October 2016, Ayeesha's father contacted a welfare officer and expressed his intention to give both Ayeesha and her brother up for adoption, and he also had the intent to place the children in foster care out of fear that he might harm the two of them in a fit of anger. However, he ultimately did not follow through with the adoption plans. In fact, the adoption process required the mutual consent of Ayeesha's biological mother or the Ministry of Social and Family Development (MSF) could go ahead with the adoption without requiring the consent of Ayeesha's birth mother.
Ayeesha's murder On the night of 10 August 2017, the tenth month of Ayeesha's confinement in the toilet, Ayeesha's stepmother, then pregnant with her third child, complained to her husband that Ayeesha defied her instructions to do squats. In response, Ayeesha's father grabbed Ayeesha's arm and pulled her up, before he smacked her 15 to 20 times on her face, before he went to bed for the rest of the night. At about 3am on 11 August 2017, for the second time, Ayeesha's stepmother complained to her husband that both Ayeesha and her brother were sleeping in a weird posture, which prompted Ayeesha's father to punch the two children on their backs. Things were worse for Ayeesha especially, as her father slapped her and even kicked and stamped on her.
As a result of the ruthless and relentless attack, five-year-old Ayeesha was mortally wounded and she eventually died from her injuries. Ayeesha weighed just 13.2 kg (29.1 lbs) at the time of her death, and she was reported to have sustained multiple scars, marks and other external injuries all over her body, and she was also severely malnourished. Ayeesha's death was only discovered on the evening of 11 August, when Ayeesha's stepmother went to use the toilet, and she alerted her husband, who tried to resuscitate his daughter using CPR but to no avail. However, Ayeesha's father tried to cover up the death of Ayeesha by disposing of the evidence, including the CCTV camera, into different rubbish bins at nearby blocks during the early hours of 12 August 2017. Aside from this, Ayeesha's father told his wife to file a police report against him for physically assaulting up and raping her.
After undergoing efforts to cover up the murder, Ayeesha's father proceeded to bring both Ayeesha and her brother to Singapore General Hospital (SGH), where he lied to the hospital authorities that the girl became unresponsive that morning. Ayeesha was pronounced dead at the hospital and the brother was hospitalized for his injuries. Ayeesha's brother was not only discovered to be severely undernourished, he was also diagnosed with global developmental delay due to social deprivation. The boy had to undergo physiotherapy, occupational therapy and speech therapy. At the time he was admitted to hospital, Ayeesha's brother was not able to stand on his own despite reaching the age of four and he spent more than three months in hospital, before he was well enough to be placed in foster care. An autopsy was carried out and it was certified that Ayeesha died as a result of a fatal head injury caused by blunt force trauma.
Criminal charges After the death of Ayeesha, the police was alerted by the hospital authorities regarding the case, and her father was questioned by the police over the death of his daughter. At first, he lied to the police in a total of five statements from 12 to 17 August 2017 that Ayeesha died because she had hit her head on a playground slide. However, after the police gathered sufficient incriminating evidence that contradicted the man's story, Ayeesha's father eventually admitted that he was responsible for the injuries sustained by his daughter. As a result, Ayeesha's father was charged with murder and ill-treating both Ayeesha and her brother.
On 15 May 2023, six years after he allegedly killed Ayeesha, the case of Ayeesha's father was first revealed to the media for the first time, when he appeared in court to await confirmation to stand trial for his daughter's abuse and murder. Altogether, Ayeesha's father faced a total of 26 criminal charges, which consisted of one count of murder, two counts of wrongfully confining Ayeesha and her brother, six counts of causing evidence of a murder case to disappear and lying to police, and 17 counts of child abuse (eight for ill-treating Ayeesha and nine for ill-treating Ayeesha's brother). Deputy Public Prosecutor (DPP) Han Ming Kuang, the prosecutor in charge of the case, argued for the toilet confinement charge relating to the girl and the six counts of destroying evidence to be jointly tried with the murder charge, stating that these lesser charges were committed at around the same location and same timing when the murder happened, and they were ought to be jointly proceeded during the trial due to their close relation to the sole charge of murder. Mervyn Cheong, the lawyer representing Ayeesha's father, objected to the prosecution's application on the grounds that it would be unfair and prejudicial for his client to have to defend himself against additional charges that carry a less severe outcome compared to a murder charge.
Four days later, on 19 May 2023, the High Court ruled that Ayeesha's father should only stand trial for solely the charge of murdering his daughter, while the remaining 25 charges were to be held in abeyance while pending the outcome of the proceedings. The murder trial was scheduled to begin at the High Court two months later on 5 July 2023.
Trial of Ayeesha’s father Murder trial hearing The murder trial of Ayeesha's father, then 43 years old, began on 5 July 2023. The trial was presided over by Justice Aedit Abdullah, and the prosecution was led by Deputy Public Prosecutor (DPP) Han Ming Kuang while Ayeesha's father was represented by Mervyn Cheong. From the start, Ayeesha and her father were not named in the media because of a gag order that was imposed to protect the identity of Ayeesha's surviving brother.