Indian-origin man in Singapore sentenced to death

Singapore: A Malaysian man of Indian-origin has been sentenced to death by a court here for delivering heroin in Singapore and acting as a middleman for drug traffickers, according to a media report. Kishor Kumar Raguan, 41, delivered a bag containing more than 900 grams of a powdery substance in July 2016. The four bundles inside the bag were later analysed and found that it contain 36.5 grams of heroin.
The law provides for the death penalty if the amount of heroin trafficked is more than 15 grams. Singaporean national of Chinese-origin Pung Ah Kiang, 61, who received the bag from Raguan, was sentenced to life imprisonment for possessing the drugs for the purpose of trafficking. High court Justice Audrey Lim said she found that both Raguan and Pung knew that the bundles contained heroin.
Rejecting Raguan's defence that he believed the bag contained "stones", the judge said the Indian-origin man, who was involved in drug activities, had failed to show that he genuinely believed the bundles contained something innocuous. She found that Kishor was told that the items to be delivered were "kallu", which he knew referred to heroin.
Justice Lim also rejected Pung's claim that he did not know what was in the bag and was merely keeping it temporarily for his brother-in-law. She imposed life imprisonment on Pung as he was certified by the prosecution to have substantively assisted the Central Narcotics Bureau (CNB) in disrupting drug trafficking activities, the report said. "As the prosecution did not issue Kishor with a certificate of substantive assistance... I passed the mandatory death sentence on him," a report quoted the judge as saying. Raguan had brought the bag containing the bundles of drugs into Singapore on July 29, 2016, and delivered it to Pung near his Paya Lebar condominium.