Banting murders
Malaysian entrepreneur and murder victim
On 30 August 2010, in Banting, Selangor, Malaysia, 47-year-old cosmetics millionaire Datuk Sosilawati Lawiya and her three companions – bank officer Noorhisham Mohamad, lawyer Ahmad Kamil Abdul Karim, and her driver Kamaruddin Shamsuddin – all went missing. The four missing people were later found to have been murdered and had their bodies burnt by a lawyer named N. Pathmanabhan and another three accomplices. The remains of Sosilawati and the three men were later found at a farm in Tanjung Sepat, which belonged to Pathmanabhan. Pathmanabhan and his three farm hands – T. Thilaiyalagan, R. Matan and R. Kathavarayan (also spelt R. Khatavarayan) – were all arrested and charged with murder based on circumstantial evidence and without the bodies of the victims in this case.
In May 2013, the four accused were all convicted of murder and sentenced to death by the Shah Alam High Court. A long-drawn appeal process ended in March 2017, with the Federal Court confirming the death sentences of Pathmanabhan, Thilaiyagan, and Kathavarayan but released Matan after citing insufficient evidence to link him to the murders. The condemned trio - Pathmanabhan, Thilaiyagan and Kathavarayan - are still incarcerated on death row as of 2024.
The conviction of the killers marked the second case of murder conviction(s) without a body in Malaysia after the 1963 case of Sunny Ang, a law student who was hanged for murdering his girlfriend during a scuba diving trip for her insurance at Sisters' Islands in Singapore, when Singapore was still a part of Malaysia back then.
Murder investigation
On 30 August 2010, in Selangor, Malaysia, 47-year-old cosmetics millionaire Datuk Sosilawati Lawiya and her three companions – 38-year-old bank officer Noorhisham Mohamad, 32-year-old lawyer Ahmad Kamil Abdul Karim, and her 44-year-old driver Kamaruddin Shamsuddin – went to Banting from Kuala Lumpur for business matters, and they went missing thereafter. At the time of her disappearance, Sosilawati, who was of Indonesian descent and grew up in Johor, was the founder of Nouvelle Beauty Center Sdn.
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