Murder Madhuri Movie
Dierdre Roussin
On 4 September 2008, at a hotel in Geylang, Singapore's red-light district, the naked body of a 21-year-old Sri Lankan prostitute was found under the bed of one of its rooms.[1][2] The victim, identified as Radika Devi Thayagarajah, was later found to be seven months' pregnant with a baby boy, and the child died as a result of his mother's death. Furthermore, Devi was speculated to have been killed at least 24 hours before her corpse was discovered by the hotel cleaners. Through police investigations, the police tracked down the man last seen booking the hotel room with Devi, and arrested the 20-year-old suspect Madhuri Jaya Chandra Reddy, who confessed to strangling Devi to death during an argument, which occurred due to Reddy asking to have sex with Devi a third time but Devi demanded him to pay more money. Originally charged with murder, Reddy was in the end sentenced to 17 years in jail and 12 strokes of the cane after he pleaded guilty to a reduced charge of manslaughter.[3][4]
On 4 September 2008, at around 11am, two cleaners working at a hotel in Geylang, Singapore's red-light district, were carrying their usual task of cleaning one of the rooms when one of them (who wanted to sweep the underside of the bed) was unable to move the bed, finding it unusually heavy, and after finding bloodstains under the bed, the two men checked underneath and discovered the naked body of a deceased woman hidden under the bed. A police report was lodged at around 11.50pm, and the police classified the woman's death as murder through preliminary investigations.[5][6][7]
According to a forensic pathologist Dr George Paul, who performed an autopsy on the victim, he found that the cause of death was manual strangulation. He also found that the victim was seven months' pregnant and the fetus was a boy, and the unborn child had also died due to his mother's death.[8] Dr Paul also determined that the woman had died for at least 24 hours from the time when her corpse was found, as the body was getting discoloured. The victim's outer skin had begun to loosen due to early stages of decomposition, and discoloured veins were popping up under the skin.[6]
The Geylang hotel case was one of the two murders to happen on that same day itself.[9] In the other case of murder (six hours before the Geylang case), a Chinese national named Gong Hui Long was stabbed to death by his comaptriot, who later went to his employer's flat to attack and stab the employer, who survived the stabbing. The killer, Luo Faming, was charged with murder on the same day as the perpetrator of the Geylang case but subsequently, Luo was given 24 years' jail for two reduced charges of manslaughter and attempted manslaughter. During the time when police conducted simultaneous investigations in the two separate murders (including the Geylang case), the killer of the Geylang case remained at large as of the time when Luo was arrested,[10] although by the time Luo was charged, the suspect had been taken into custody.[11]
The Special Investigation Section of the Criminal Investigation Department (CID) were put in charge of the investigations, which were led by Assistant Superintendent of Police (ASP) Ang Leong Peng. ASP Ang instructed both Station Inspector (SI) Chris Lee and SI Erulandy Guruthevan to check with the hotel registrar and CCTV footage, and the police cordoned the room for eight hours while collecting the evidence,[12] and the shockng discovery itself caused the people staying in the hotel to check out.[13] The police found that based on the name list, an Indian construction worker named Samy Gopinath was the last person using the room, and at 2.30 am on 4 September (nine hours before the gruesome discovery), Samy checked in together with a woman using his work permit. After obtaining his particulars, the police approached Samy at his workplace in Jalan Kayu, and brought him in for questioning. Samy, who was not yet considered as a prime suspect at this point, denied that he committed any crime on the date he checked in, much less murder. Subsequently, after the autopsy revealed that the victim died for at least a day or more at the time of the discovery, and since Samy checked in the room just nine hours before the body was found, the police concluded that Samy was not the killer and he was innocent, and hence SI Guru released Samy after receiving the autopsy findings and order from ASP Ang.[6]
The police searched around the room, and inside the bathroom, they discovered items hidden in a hole at the side of the bathtub. Among these items were a black handbag, a Sri Lankan passport, stub of a prepaid SIM card, a pair of jeans, a woman's blouse and female underwear. With the discovery of the passport, the police identified the victim as 21-year-old Radika Devi Thayagarajah, a Sri Lankan citizen born on 8 January 1987. Background information revealed that Devi had two more sons aged two and six at the time of the murder, and she was working as a sex worker in Geylang prior to her death.[6]
After checking the CCTV footage and hotel registry, the police found that Devi checked in the hotel using her passport at 11.58pm on 2 September 2008, two days before her body was found.[14] The footage revealed that Devi was together with a dark-skinned and Indian-looking man wearing a beige cap, a sighting confirmed by a witness.[15] As the footage showed that Devi was using her mobile phone on one of the scenes, and the police did not find the phone among the belongings recovered, the police deduced that the killer, most likely the man with the beige cap, might have stolen the mobile phone. Phone records also showed that the phone belonging to Devi was still being used even after she died and prior to the phone calls made after her death, Devi's phone had last made two phone calls to one same phone number. The number was later traced to an Indian national named Madhuri Jaya Chandra Reddy, and he resembled the man captured wearing the beige cap by the hotel's CCTV cameras.[6]
At around 5am the next day on 5 September 2008, ASP Ang and his team of officers went to a dormitory in Ama Keng Road (located at Lim Chu Kang), where Reddy was staying. According to the police records, the security officer was informed that the police were looking for Reddy to seek his assistance in investigations, and the officer was unable to provide them Reddy's block and room number, as only the manager, who was then not present, had the details. The security officer agreed to help the police to deactivate Reddy's dormitory access pass (which bore Reddy's work permit number) and to bring him to the office, where the police could arrest him. The plan eventually worked, as Reddy was unable to exit with his access pass, and he approached the security officer for help, and brought into the security office.[16] This allowed the police to finally arrest Reddy after 22 hours of investigation.[17] Devi's mobile phone and several pieces of gold items and jewelry were found in Reddy's possession, and soon after his arrest, Reddy confessed that he indeed murdered Devi.[6]
After this, 20-year-old Madhuri Jaya Chandra Reddy was officially charged with murder on 6 September 2008. If found guilty of murder, Reddy would be sentenced to death under Section 302 of the Singaporean Penal Code.[18][19]
Reddy, a native of Andhra Pradesh from India, first came to Singapore to work as a general worker on 28 November 2007. Reddy worked here for about ten months before mid-August 2008, when he noticed a missed call from an unknown number and when he dialed back, he heard the voice of a female caller, who introduced herself as Devi and asked if he could head fo Geylang and meet her; the caller "Devi" was none other than the victim Radika Devi Thayagarajah. Reddy correctly assumed that Devi was a prostitute based on the flirtatious way she spoke to him on the phone, but he stated that he was sleeping and could not go. Reddy would call her back in the following few weeks, and on 2 September 2008, at 7pm, the eve of the murder, Reddy asked Devi if he could meet her at Geylang, and it was negotiated that Reddy would pay Devi $S50 for one round of sex. More than three hours later, Reddy and Devi met each other at a hotel along Lorong 18 in Geylang, and after Devi finished her dinner at 11.45pm, the pair discussed on the payment and while Devi told Reddy that he had to pay S$150 for sex in addition to S$40 for renting a room for four hours. After some bargaining, Devi agreed to pay the S$40 room charge instead.[20][21]
At around midnight, the duo went into the hotel (the same place where she met Reddy) and Devi booked one room using her Sri Lankan passport, and inside the room, Reddy and Devi had two rounds of sex, and by 2am on 3 September 2008, Reddy asked Devi to have sexual intercourse with him a third time. However, Devi wanted Reddy to pay her more if he wanted to do it, but Reddy refused. Devi and Reddy fiercely argued over this and Devi threatened to call her agent to come and beat Reddy up. Reddy managed to snatch away the phone and when Devi rushed towards him with her fists clenched, Reddy retaliated by closing his hand around Devi's neck, squeezing it and pinned her down on the bed to stop her from attacking him or taking back her phone. During the struggle, which lasted for a couple of minutes, Devi was unable to put up resistance due to her pregnancy and she died as a result of strangulation.[22][23]
Upon realizing that Devi had died, Reddy frantically tried to hide the body to cover up Devi's death. Reddy chose to hide the naked body of Devi under the bed, but the bed was not lying flat due to the body underneath, and noticing that there was a layer of fabric covering the base. Reddy slashed open the fabric and found an empty space between the bed top and the base, and after removing Devi's gold chain and two gold rings, Reddy pushed the corpse into the space itself, and laid the bed down. After hiding the body, Reddy left the hotel by the spiral staircase and roamed the streets for about ten minutes before he returned to the room. When he entered the bathroom, he discovered Devi's belongings and hid them at an opening at the base of the bathtub, and covered up the hole. Reddy also stole two gold bangles and a gold chain from Devi's bag and also kept her handphone, and he pushed the bag and Devi's clothes inside the hollow space of the bathtub. Knowing that he was seen checking into the room with a girl, Reddy decided to avoid suspicion by looking for another girl and bring her back to the hotel.[24][25][26]
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