He claims to have lost his phone, but at the same time, he never reported it as stolen.

Also, "The Independent reported that Tangaraju had a prior arrest record in another drug use case, and that he was required to submit himself to regular urine tests. He had missed a test and was on his way to report to the police when he arrested."

Seems rather suspicious.

Nonetheless, the fact that he doesn't have a lawyer is extremely concerning from a human rights perspective.

If this happened to you: you lost your phone (it was stolen), but you didn't report it (because when someone stole it you were on a date with a colleague from work, and didn't want your husband to know), and then it was used for drug trafficking and then you were sentenced to death in Singapore, would you still be saying that your own behavior "seems rather suspicious"? Don't you think the police case seems rather suspicious, right?

> "because when someone stole it you were on a date with a colleague from work, and didn't want your husband to know"

I don't understand the logic here. Why not report it after the date? A rather strange number of coincidences... having a "prior arrest record in another drug use case" and not reporting his phone being stolen, only to be arrested for a drug event again.

Nevertheless, I would never cheat on my spouse, so I would not be in such a situation to begin with.

Regardless, it is possible that we are not really hearing his side of the story properly. He doesn't even have a lawyer, which is extremely concerning. Regardless of whether or not he is guilty, he deserves the best defense possible.

The point is there’s lots of reasons to have your stolen phone not reported, you don’t immediately have to jump to suspicious, you could empathize with that.

I imagine that some folks in NZ may not report to police a stolen phone out of general distrust of police, or a lack of belief that it would help anything.

Of course, if he knew he was going to be busted two weeks later then he should have but… haha

In Singapore you don't have a right to a lawyer when questioned by police (you can have one after a statement is made). If you don't answer police questions or don't sight a statement, that can be used against you in court as proof of guilt.

Is there a history or precedent for this in Common Law? Or Chinese law? What’s the origin of this idea?

People report their phones as stolen? Car? Sure. Gun? Of course. If I lose my phone, I'm annoyed, and if its insured, I'm cashing in on the policy. Otherwise I'm going about my day. All assuming Findmyphone fails, in the event its off or out of service area.

It's definitely shady for sure, but I think all of this is besides the point: murdering people over cannabis is absolutely inhumane and insane.

Yah, it’s not like he’s selling children’s blood or something. If he even was selling anything at all.

I’m all for following the laws of a place, but that these laws are backwards, needs to be said. What social harm is cannabis doing? What special good is this dudes lamentably preventable death doing?

All the more surprising because Singapore is not some ultra orthodox conservative theocracy. It’s this place that a lot of my classmates in college wanted to go and work in. But it’s light-years from Hong Kong, in terms of liberty. How did things go so wrong? I mean both those places are run by Chinese, right?