The wife of a Singaporean police officer has admitted to starving, torturing and eventually killing her Myanmar housekeeper.
The employee reportedly weighed just 24 kg (53 lb) when she died of her injuries in the incident in 2016.
Prosecutors have called Gaiyathiri Murugayan’s actions “evil and utterly inhumane.”
It is one of a series of high-profile girls abuse cases in the wealthy city-state in recent years.
Rights groups have expressed concern about the way foreign domestic workers, many of whom are from neighboring countries in Asia, have been treated.
Ms. Murugayan, 40, pleaded guilty to 28 charges in a Singapore court on Tuesday, including culpable murder against Piang Ngaih Don. If convicted, she can be sentenced to life.
‘Throwing her like a rag doll’
The court heard that Ms. Piang started working for Ms. Murugayan in 2015, in her first job abroad.
Ms. Murugayan began assaulting her in October 2015 after claiming that Ms. Piang was “slow, unsanitary and overeating,” according to local media outlets, which continued the legal proceedings.
CCTV footage from cameras installed in the house showed the abuse she suffered in the last month of her life, often being attacked several times a day. Ms. Murugayan also reportedly burned her with a heated iron and was accused of “throwing her around like a rag doll”.
The court heard that Ms. Piang’s meals often consisted of sliced bread soaked in water, cold food from the refrigerator, or some rice. She lost 15 kg – about 38% of her body weight – in 14 months.
The 24-year-old helper died in July 2016 after being repeatedly attacked by Ms. Murugayan and her mother for several hours. An autopsy report later revealed that Ms. Piang died from lack of oxygen in her brain after being choked repeatedly.
Prosecutors called for life imprisonment for Ms. Murugayan, while defense attorneys have asked for a reduced sentence, arguing that she was suffering from depression at the time and that obsessive-compulsive personality disorder had been diagnosed.
Her husband, police officer Kelvin Chelvam, and her mother are also facing multiple charges. According to reports in local media, Chelvam was suspended from the police in 2016.
Singaporean Manpower Minister Josephine Teo said on Wednesday that Ms. Piang’s situation had gone unnoticed despite multiple doctor visits and checks by her agency.
In one case, the doctor saw bruises, but Ms. Murugayan had claimed that the victim had often fallen.
Ms. Teo called the case “terrible” and said that several precautions have been taken in recent years to protect foreign domestic workers.
She later told reporters that her ministry is reviewing how doctors report medical exams, adding that they had a “duty” to report to the police if they discovered signs of abuse.
Singapore has about 250,000 foreign domestic workers, mostly from countries such as Indonesia, Myanmar or the Philippines.
Cases of abuse are not uncommon. In 2017, a couple was convicted of starving their housekeeper from the Philippines. In 2019, another couple was convicted of abusing a Myanmar worker.
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In 2017, the BBC spoke to a Filipino housekeeper who said she had been abused by a wealthy family in Brazil.