'He didn't get to be 30'
By Rennie Whang
The New Paper
Thursday, Sep 13, 2012
HER head hurts, her heart feels like it has been stabbed.
So said the mother of a victim in the Sydney double murder case. She was reacting to reasons for MrRam Tiwary’s acquittal, which were published by the New South Wales Court of Criminal Appeal on Monday.
“My son was wronged. He went to study, not to pick fights. He had no enemies,” Madam Chiew Lee Hua, 64, mother of Mr Tony Tan Poh Chuan, 27, told The New Paper last night.
Mr Tan and Mr Tay Chow Lyang, 26, were stabbed and clubbed to death with an aluminium baseball bat on Sept 15, 2003, in a suburban flat.
Mr Tan was found slumped against the wall beside the closed front door. He was apparently first attacked in the living room and chased up to the door.
Mr Tay was found lying on his back behind a sofa in the lounge room, with deposits of his clotted blood on a nearby computer and blood staining the surrounding walls.
Reasonable doubt
The court said the likely presence of other people and insufficient forensic evidence raised a reasonable doubt of Mr Tiwary’s guilt.
Mr Tan had been seen getting into a white car with three other people, following a noon lecture, the court said.
The car was parked facing the wrong way on a one-way street.
He was driven just hundreds of metres to his flat where, within the next 10 to 15 minutes, he was murdered.
The three have remained elusive despite police appeals.
Still, Madam Chiew said her son would refuse rides from other people as he did not like to inconvenience them.
“The house was so close by, he just needed to walk. He wouldn’t have gotin. I believe in my son,” she added.
The court also said aspects of Mr Tiwary’s account had been suspicious, but the inconsistencies could have been partly driven by fear of consequences, if he knew the reasons behind the murders.
“Of course I want him to tell us more,” said Madam Chiew.
“But why would he say anything else now that he’s free? I have no closure, but it can’t be helped.”
Throughout the interview at her three-room Dover Road flat, Madam Chew spoke of the pity of her son’s death.
She recalled that then-Lieutenant Mr Tan, a Singapore Armed Forces scholar, had said he would get “crabs” on his uniform by the time he was 30 years old.
This refers to crests given to Majors, Lieutenant-Colonels, Colonels and above.
“He didn’t get to be 30.”
Mr Tiwary, who had always maintained his innocence, was tried and convicted of both murders in 2006. A retrial was ordered in 2008 and he was again found guilty.
He was sentenced to 48 years’ jail in 2009, but was acquitted on July 26.