Inspector Gopal and the other police officers thought that throwing me into jail would convey the message that any investigation on him would be over. But he didn’t bargain on my family and friends fighting to clear my name.
EIGHT
PRISON
I was held in a solitary confinement cell as soon as I was put into Queenstown Remand Prison. I was stripped to my underwear and left to sleep on the cold hard cement floor. I could not tell whether it was day or night. There were no windows and light came through only when the wardens pushed the food through an opening in the heavy metal door. My mind began to wander to the many places and periods of my life. To keep my sanity and uplift my spirits, I played a game of ‘mental’ chess, holding both sides of the game. I focused on the strategies of chess. I didn’t understand why I had to be kept in solitary confinement. I was told that it was for my own safety but I didn’t believe that. It was a tough ordeal. Police officers would come occasionally to question me and ask me to sign statements. I never did sign them as doing so would not only have implicated me but also the friends with whom I grew up.
David Marshall visited me in Queenstown Prison. He was defending me along with Leo Fernando, a leading criminal lawyer, and Mak Kok Wing, a classmate of mine. One of the first things David Marshall told me was that he was very surprised that so many people had asked him to defend me. They were prepared to pay his fee because they felt that I should be defended by the best. He told me that he would not take a fee for defending me because he didn’t believe in charging a fellow lawyer. But at the end of it all, we paid his disbursements as we felt it was the right thing to do. He was quite pleased to receive that.
David Marshall told me: “I’ve spoken to the people up there, my lad. Are you prepared? They may keep you here for a long time without a trial and this detention order by the minister can be renewed every year. So, nobody knows how long you’ll be here, but they said if you are prepared to cooperate and sign those statements, you could make a deal and be out of here in the next couple of weeks.”
“I know the statements that they have prepared for me,” I replied. “Mr Marshall, those statements would get a lot of innocent people into trouble. They will all be remanded in prison and there will be no one there to fight for them except me when I get out. But if I’ve implicated them, I won’t even be on their side. These are people whom I grew up with and they are my friends. I am not going to get them into trouble.”
“But you know, lad, you can be here for a long time if you don’t cooperate,” he reiterated.
“I would rather be here for a long time than gain my freedom by betraying my friends.”
David Marshall smiled and held my hand. He was a very kind man. “I’m glad you have made that decision, lad. If you had told me otherwise, I would have carried on with your instructions but I would not have liked what I was doing.”
Once we had decided to fight my detention, my mind was at peace. The prison authorities treated me less harshly because I think David Marshall’s name carried a lot of weight. Also, from that time on, David Marshall and I developed a very good working relationship. Many of the documents, affidavits and evidence that he required were obtained by my brother, Sudheesh, who visited him to prepare the case. Mr Marshall told me that my brother would have made an excellent lawyer.
I lost track of time, so I’m not exactly sure when they took me out of solitary confinement and put me into the main part of the prison with the other inmates. I do remember a medical officer called Dr Singh who saw me early in my incarceration. I felt he was a disgrace to his profession. His ill-treatment of the prisoners knew no bounds. His attitude was worse than that of the wardens, with no sympathy at all for the inmates. Every ailment was treated with aspirin. More often than not, he would just bark at you and accuse you of being a malingerer.
The day I came out of solitary confinement, I was taken to see him. There were two men dressed in normal office clothes with him. I didn’t know who they were then and I still don’t know who they are today. They were shadowy figures, the type you see in spy movies lurking in dimly lit underground carparks.
One of them asked me, “How do you feel?”
I told him I was feeling alright even though I was not. I didn’t want them to know that I was physically on the verge of a breakdown. They continued to quiz me, trying to make conversation.
“You do a lot of criminal cases, right?” one of them said.
I realised they were trying to find out if they had broken me during my solitary confinement.
He continued, “If a person is charged for theft, under what section of the Penal Code would you charge him?”
“It depends on what sort of theft you are talking about,” I replied.
“What do you mean?” the other man asked.
“Simple theft is Section 379, theft from dwelling, it may be 380, and if it is theft from employer, it’s Section 381, and so on. These are the sections.” They asked me a series of questions which I answered to the best of my ability. I hoped I wasn’t making any mistakes because I really didn’t want them to think that they were breaking me.
Finally, one of them looked at the other and said, “Wah, this guy is tough, huh?” They smiled and told me I could go to the clinic, which was like a small hospital, to sleep. The thought that I would get to sleep on a bed was such a relief. I had been unable to get any regular sleep on the cold cement floor of the solitary confinement cell. I slept very soundly but not for long.
About an hour later, I was rudely woken up and instructed to dress. Feeling disoriented, I asked where I was being taken. “Don’t ask any questions,” said one of the wardens who had aroused me from my sleep. They handcuffed me behind my back. As soon as I got into the van, an Indian officer who had looked uncomfortable when he saw me unlocked the handcuffs and cuffed me in front so that I could sit more comfortably. He even lit a cigarette and gave it to me to smoke. I was very grateful to him for his kindness. I didn’t know where they were taking me but it seemed an endless journey. I couldn’t see out of the van. Many things ran through my mind as I sat there. I even wondered if I was being taken somewhere to be shot. I thought about my clients who had been locked up in Queenstown Remand Prison and whether something like this had happened to them. It finally struck me that I was being taken to Changi Prison when I detected a faint smell of the sea in the air. In those days, you could still get the scent of the sea quite a way inland because there were no tall buildings to block the sea breeze as there are now.
I figured that I was being transferred to the psychiatric ward and sure enough I was dropped off there. I asked the officer why I had been brought there. He said that I had shown signs of claustrophobia when I was in solitary confinement, and the authorities wanted to investigate and observe me further. My new wardens had been told that I had been behaving strangely. Maybe they thought there was something remiss in my Bobby Fischer and Boris Spassky impersonations when I was playing mental chess in the cell. I thought that perhaps they were trying to make me mad or make me look mad.
I was given a bed in an open ward on the ground floor. It’s funny because the movie One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, starring Jack Nicholson, had just been screened the year before. I hadn’t seen it but my friends had described it to me. I guess my status in the ward wasn’t all that different. My sleeping companions were murderers who, because of their insanity, were kept there at the President’s pleasure—we were all guests of Benjamin Sheares. I later learnt that some of the inmates had been there since the 1950s and were absolutely stark raving mad. Some of them were so mad that they had to be handcuffed to their beds and shackled. You could see the raw, mottled skin on their wrists and ankles where they tried to wrest themselves free of their shackles.
I was confused as I looked across the ward. Some of the inmates were smiling, others singing. It seemed like I was the only sane person around, apart from the officers. It was my worst nightmare and I thought I would become mad if I stayed
there too long. An officer told me that there was a certain Denis Pinder upstairs in the medical ward. The former chairman of Sime Darby was put in jail for criminal breach of trust and cheating. Pinder was in the ward because he had a problem with his leg and he was not able to walk properly.
In the midst of my ordeal, I must say I got lucky. One of the officers knew me because I had defended a few of his brothers in court for various offences. I thanked God that I had got them all acquitted. The officer walked me out of the ward and offered me a cigarette. He said: “I’m giving you some pieces of paper and this pen. Write your story down because a psychiatrist will be coming to evaluate your case. Tell him whatever you have to tell him because if he certifies you a nutcase, you’re going to spend a lot of time here. So, please do what is necessary to show that you’re not a nutcase. And if you’re caught with this pen and paper, don’t say who gave it to you because I’ll get the sack if you do.”
I assured him I wouldn’t. I was so thankful to be treated as a normal person. When I got back to the ward, I hid the stationery under my pillow. I would sit up at night, almost in darkness, and slowly pen my thoughts about what had happened to me so far. I wrote about how I had been framed and my early experiences in Queenstown Remand Prison. I questioned why I was in jail in the first place.
I can’t be sure, but on the ninth or tenth day at Changi Prison, I was told by one of the wardens that the psychiatrist would like to see me. I stuffed the paper down my shorts and walked with the warden to the psychiatrist’s room.
“Good morning, Subhas,” the psychiatrist said pleasantly.
“Good morning, doctor.”
He tried to reassure me. “You don’t know me but I know you. I’ve read about you. Your sister was a casual acquaintance a long time ago. We worked together but we have lost contact with each other. Do you smoke?”
“Yes,” I replied. He got me a cigarette and offered me a cup of coffee which I was happy to accept as it was a luxury in prison.
“Let’s talk,” he said, as soon as I had taken a few sips of the coffee.
“Before we talk, doctor, I had the privilege of getting a pen and some paper to write about my ordeal. So, why don’t you read what I’ve written and then you can start your evaluation of my mental condition.”
“Good,” he replied. I pulled out the paper from my shorts and gave it to him. He left a packet of cigarettes and matches on the table for me. As I puffed on another cigarette, the doctor read what I had written.
After reading my note, the doctor looked at me and said: “There’s no reason for me to question someone who can write so lucidly. You can’t be suffering from a mental disorder. Claustrophobia is not a mental disease. It’s just a frame of mind that some people have. I don’t see any reason why you should spend time here. What I’ll recommend is that you be transferred back to Queenstown Remand Prison and that you be kept in a grille.” He explained that in a grille, I would share a space that is enclosed with bars, not walls, with 14 other prisoners. I would be able to see beyond the cell. “I’ll ensure that they do so and if they don’t, there could be dire consequences. You can let your family know and they can tell the press,” he added.
I heaved an audible sigh of relief and thanked the doctor. I asked when I could get out and he replied as soon as possible. With that expectation, I returned to the ward much happier than when I left it to see the doctor. But I was still not sure when arrangements would be made to send me back to Queenstown. I was very keen to get out of Changi because I was terrified that someone would strangle me in my sleep. It wasn’t paranoia. On one of the nights, I had been jolted out of my sleep at about 3 o’clock in the morning by an inmate called Yusoff, who slept in the bed next to mine.
Yusoff had killed a security guard, the guard’s wife and their two children for throwing sand into his rice while he was at work. He had flown into a rage when he discovered what they had done and then gone off to Sungei Road where he bought a secondhand parang but not before having a good meal first. He paid five cents for the knife to be sharpened and, at midnight, went to the security officer’s home and decimated the whole family. He left an infant untouched because he said the infant hadn’t done anything. He was charged and convicted for murder, but because of insanity, he had been kept in the psychiatric ward under the President’s pleasure order. A very strong and violent person, Yusoff had required six to seven wardens to hold him down when he went mad. Everyone called him Raja Yusoff because he was king of the ward. He could even get away with hitting the superintendent because he was certified insane.
So, when he stood ominously over me in the dark at 3.00 am, I was terrified. But I couldn’t show him that.
“What is it, Yusoff? What are you looking at?” I asked him calmly.
“I’m hungry,” he replied in Malay.
A chill went through my body and I thought to myself: “Oh, my God! He’s hungry and he’s staring at me.” I fought to stay calm and asked him again, “What do you want?”
“I want your biscuits.”
My family had just visited that day and given me 2 katis (1.2 kg) of crackers. The biscuits that were allowed in prison were hard, tasteless, soda crackers, nothing like the Jacob’s brand of cream crackers that you would have at afternoon garden tea parties. You had to soften the biscuits by dunking them in the concoction the prison passed off as a beverage every morning.
“You want my biscuits? Take and eat them,” I told him.
You wouldn’t believe what Yusoff did. He sat down and ate up all the tasteless crackers in one sitting. Some of the other inmates got up at the noise of crunched crackers from Yusoff’s bed and stared sleepily at him but no one asked him for any. He was, after all, the raja of the ward. When Yusoff was done, he thanked me and went back to sleep. He was soon snoring.
Another inmate in the psychiatric ward was an Indian man charged with murdering his wife after finding her in bed with her lover. The lover managed to escape through a window but the wife was not so lucky. The man quietly took out a chopper from the kitchen drawer and chopped her head off. He then took a shower to wash off the blood on his body, put his wife’s head in a bag and cycled to Bukit Panjang police station. He deposited the bag on a table without saying a word. It was the middle of the night and a sergeant asked him, “Hey, mama, what are you doing here at this time of the night?”
“I want to report a case,” he replied.
The sergeant looked at him and said, “Okay, what case have you got? Report your case.”
Apparently, the man calmly took his wife’s head out of the bag. Holding it by the hair, he placed it on the sergeant’s table. Clotted globs of blood and severed tendons and arteries were said to be dangling from the neck. It seems that the sergeant fainted and was later demoted for fainting, which sounds a bit unfair. How often do you see a decapitated head in Singapore? The man was ultimately charged but also put into the psychiatric ward because he was deemed insane. So you can understand my constant state of apprehension while I remained in Changi Prison.
Every evening, at around 4 to 5 o’clock, we were taken out to the yard for some sunlight and exercise. Another Indian man, who was in prison for committing a murder, would come up to me every day.
“You’re a lawyer, is it?” he would say.
“Ya,” I would reply.
“Lend me $10.”
I would ask him why he wanted $10 as we were not allowed to have money. He always replied that he was being released that day and needed money to take a taxi home. Every day, I would give him the same answer: “There’s no problem even if you don’t have money. You see, when you reach home, your family will be there to receive you. They can pay the taxi driver.”
“Ya, I never thought of that! No wonder you’re a lawyer. You’re a very smart man.” He would walk away and the very next day, he would ask me for $10 again. This went on until I was transferred back to Queenstown Remand Prison.
A day or two after meeting the psychiatrist, the superint
endent of Changi Prison informed me that the psychiatrist had reported that there was nothing wrong with me. The psychiatrist had said that I should not be kept in solitary confinement and had recommended that I be put in a grille. The superintendent was quite a good chap. He said that I would be sent back to Queenstown Remand Prison immediately.
I collected my belongings and said my goodbyes to the prisoners in the ward. Some of them understood what was going on but others just looked at me blankly. Now that I knew that I was leaving Changi, I was suddenly filled with compassion for them. I felt very sad as I didn’t know whether they would be released at all because nobody seemed to bother about them. I thought: “These are the forgotten ones. Their families have forgotten them. The authorities have forgotten them. I think they themselves have forgotten who they are or what they are.”
I walked outside and got into a waiting van. This time I was not handcuffed. The journey to Queenstown Prison seemed shorter than when I was being taken to Changi Prison. Perhaps it’s because I knew the destination this time around. On arrival at Queenstown, I was received by the officer of my block, a very short and kind officer called Osman. He looked at me and said, “Welcome back to Queenstown, Subhas.”
“Thank you, sir.”
“You’re not going to be in solitary confinement. You’re not going to stay in a small cell with others. You’re going to the grille upstairs.”
I asked if I could be taken to the grille where my friend Anthony Heng was. Anthony was my school football captain and we had played for Naval Base School together. He was being detained for a second time. Officer Osman agreed. I was glad it was him and not some other officer who could have been mean to me and refuse my request.
Osman escorted me to the grille upstairs. I shared it with 14 Chinese prisoners. Normally, being the last one in meant that I had to sleep on the floor, but the inmates had agreed to let me have the corner bed. It struck me all of a sudden that they had taken it upon themselves to make sure that my stay at Queenstown was as comfortable as possible. I think Anthony had a hand in it. They gave me a spare blanket, but I told them that I didn’t need one because I was used to sleeping on the balcony of my family’s flat in Naval Base. From that day onwards, someone in the grille would take my sai thong (sewage pot) to empty it in the main sewage tank and wash my clothes. Everyone appeared to want to do favours for me. It was like having many personal butlers, though I regarded them all as friends.
The Best I Could Page 9