alleged argument. Trial and execution Court proceedings On 12 August 1975, 59-year-old Nadarajah Govindasamy stood trial at the High Court for the charge of murdering Mohamed Azad in November 1974. Deputy Public Prosecutor (DPP) Lawrence Ang was in charge of the prosecution, while N. Ganesan represented Nadarajah as his defence counsel. Nadarajah's case was heard by two trial judges - Justice Choor Singh and Justice Frederick Arthur Chua (also known as F. A. Chua). Deva Kumari, Myrna and Arunachalam turned up as witnesses for the prosecution. While she took the stand, Deva Kumari was shown a red book, which she admitted was her diary but she rarely used it as her diary, and instead penned her lecture notes inside that book before she subsequently passed it to her sister for doing some homework. Nadarajah refused to go to the stand to give his defence or undergo a cross-examination. He made an unsworn statement on the dock, claiming that he was gravely provoked into killing Mohamed. He explained that when Mohamed came to his house and they had a conversation, he was hurt by Mohamed's alleged insults of his religion and himself, and thus he began to assault Mohamed and they got into a fight, before Nadarajah picked up a chopper and hacked Mohamed to death. He also added that he was confused and dazed as he stuffed Mohamed's corpse inside a sack and threw it into the sea near Kallang Basin. Nadarajah's lawyer N. Ganesan argued that his client should not be held fully culpable for committing murder since he was under a sudden and grave provocation and therefore had lost his self-control at the time he chopped Mohamed to death and as such, Ganesan stated that Nadarajah's charge of murder should be reduced to culpable homicide not amounting to murder. In his closing submissions however, DPP Lawrence Ang directed the court's attention to the utter brutality, violence and cold-blooded nature of the murder, pointing out that Nadarajah had deliberately omitted and skipped the major parts of his story and never gave any detail on whether there was any retaliation from Mohamed Azad during the supposed fight the men had with each other, whether if Mohamed Azad tried to run, and whether if there was any struggle for the chopper, and how concidental it was for Nadarajah to have a chopper within his reach, and also cited the witnesses' account