Draft:Murder of Zulfarhan Osman Zulkarnain

Zulfarhan Osman Zulkarnain
Born	Zulfarhan Osman Zulkarnain 29 November 1996 Malaysia
Died	1 June 2017 (aged 20) Serdang Hospital, Sepang District, Selangor, Malaysia
Cause of death	Multiple burn wounds
Nationality	Malaysian
Education	National Defence University of Malaysia
Occupation	Student
Known for	His torture and murder
Parent(s)	Zulkarnian Idros (father) Hawa Osman (mother)

Between 21 and 22 May 2017, 20-year-old Zulfarhan Osman Zulkarnain (29 November 1996 – 1 June 2017), a military cadet officer of National Defence University of Malaysia, was relentlessly tortured and scalded with a steam iron at the university's hostel by his fellow students over a stolen laptop, and died from multiple injuries at Serdang Hospital on 1 June 2017. A total of 18 students, all male, were arrested and out of these 18 suspects, six of them were charged with murder and the remaining 12 were charged with assaulting and hurting Zulfarhan.

After a long-drawn trial process from 2018 to 2021, the Kuala Lumpur High Court found the six murder accused guilty of manslaughter instead of murder, and sentenced them to 18 years' imprisonment each, while the remaining 12 were sentenced to three years in jail each for causing hurt to Zulfarhan. However, upon the prosecution's appeal on 23 July 2024, the Court of Appeal found the six main offenders guilty of murder and sentenced them to death, after finding that the murder itself was among the "rarest of the rare" cases and the six had exhibited a blatant disregard for a human’s life, and hence the death penalty was the only appropriate sentence for the six. The respective three-year jail terms of the 12 accomplices were raised to four years for each of them.

Murder investigation

On 1 June 2017, after he was hospitalized for burn wounds and swelling, 20-year-old Zulfarhan Osman Zulkarnain, the eldest of four children (two sons and two daughters) in his family, died at Serdang Hospital. At the time of his death, Zulfarhan was a third-year student and navy cadet officer of National Defence University of Malaysia in Selangor, Malaysia.

When the nature of Zulfarhan's injuries were relayed to the authorities, the police classified his death as murder, and brought in a total of 36 students from Zulfarhan's school for questioning. Defence Minister Datuk Seri Hishammuddin Tun Hussein, who got wind of the death of Zulfarhan, called for the Malaysian Armed Forces and the university to conduct an investigation into the death of Zulfarhan, who was later laid to rest at Kebun Teh Muslim cemetery in Johor Bahru.

First-stage investigations revealed that Zulfarhan was a victim of bullying in his school, and he had been tortured for a period of two days straight from 21 May to 22 May 2017 by a group of students at the university's dormitory quarters. It was alleged that a laptop of one of Zulfarhan's abusers went missing and hence they interrogated Zulfarhan and also caused harm to him by scalding him with a steam iron, trying to force him to admit to the whereabouts of the missing laptop. Although it was speculated that 20 to 30 students were involved in the brutal assault that ended with Zulfarhan's murder, 19 of them, aged between 20 and 21, were confirmed to have been allegedly responsible for the abuse-turned-murder of Zulfarhan.

On 14 June 2017, six of the 19 arrested students were charged with murder. Five of them – Muhammad Akmal Zuhairi Azmal, Azamuddin Md Sofi, Muhammad Najib Mohd Razi, Muhammad Afif Najmudin Azahat and Mohamad Shobirin Sabri – were charged with directly murdering Zulfarhan under Section 302 of the Malaysian Penal Code, which warranted the mandatory death penalty if found guilty, while the sixth, Abdoul Hakeem Mohd Ali, was charged with abetment of murder under Section 109, which prescribed the same penalty as murder under this section if convicted as charged. Another 13 students, whose identities were not revealed, were charged with voluntarily causing hurt to Zulfarhan under Section 330 of the Penal Code, for the purpose of forcing a confession out of the victim.

Participants

Murder charge

1. Muhammad Akmal Zuhairi Azmal, 21 years old
2. Muhammad Azamuddin Mad Sofi, 21 years old
3. Muhammad Najib Mohd Razi, 21 years old
4. Muhammad Afif Najmudin Azahat, 21 years old
5. Mohamad Shobirin Sabri, 21 years old
6. Abdoul Hakeem Mohd Ali, 21 years old

Charge of voluntarily causing hurt

1. Mohd Hafiz Fauzan Ismail, 21 years old
2. Mohamad Lukhmanul Hakim Mohd Zain, 21 years old
3. Ahmad Shafwan Berdal, 21 years old
4. Muhammad Amirul Asraff Mala, 21 years old
5. Luqman Hakim Shamsuri Agus, 21 years old
6. Muhammad Sufi Mohd Mustapha, 21 years old
7. Noriznan Izzairi Noor Azhar, 21 years old
8. Muhamad Ashraf Abdullah, 21 years old
9. Muhammad Danial Firdaus Azmir, 21 years old
10. Muhammad Hasif Ismail, 21 years old
11. Muhammad Adib Iman Fuad Ady Sani, 21 years old
12. Mohamad Syazwan Musa, 21 years old
13. Muhammad Akmal Akif Alias, 21 years old

Murder trial

Cases of the prosecution and defence

On 29 January 2018, the 19 students stood trial at the Kuala Lumpur High Court for the torture and murder of Zulfarhan Osman Zulkarnain. The trial was presided over by Justice Datuk Azman Abdullah, while the prosecution was led by Othman Abdullah.

The prosecution's case was that prior to the fatal torture of Zulfarhan Osman Zulkarnain, the laptop belonging to Muhammad Akmal Zuhairi Azmal, one of the six men accused of murder, had gone missing and he suspected that Zulfarhan had stolen it.

On 31 July 2019, 18 of the accused were ordered to enter their defence, after the trial court ruled that a prima facie case had been successfully established against the 18 defendants, but at the same time, the 19th and final accused, Muhammad Akmal Akif Alias, was acquitted of all charges and released after the High Court found that on the totality of the evidence, there was no case for him to answer. Muhammad Akmal Akif Alias was reportedly relieved at the acquittal and stated he wanted to continue his studies.

The

Verdict

On 1 November 2021, Justice Datuk Azman Abdullah delivered his verdict. In his judgement, Justice Azman found that there was an intention by all the six main accused to severely assault Zulfarhan, and the prosecution had proven successfully that these six defendants had harboured this intention, with one of them abetting and instructing the five others to torture Zulfarhan. However, the judge did not accept that the six accused should be convicted of murder, as he found that the prosecution failed to prove that there was an intention to cause death despite having proven their intent to injure Zulfarhan.

Therefore, the six defendants accused of murder were found guilty of a lesser charge of culpable homicide not amounting to murder, or manslaughter under Section 304(a) of the Penal Code. The law provides for a potential sentence of up to 30 years in jail and possible caning or a fine on a charge of manslaughter. The judge ordered all six of these defendants to be jailed for 18 years each, with their sentences backdated to the dates of their arrests on 1 June 2017. Additionally, the 12 other students accused of causing hurt to Zulfarhan were convicted as charged and each of them were sentenced to three years' imprisonment, although they remain out on bail while pending their appeal against sentence. Five of the six found guilty of manslaughter were similarly convicted and given three-year jail terms for the other charge of causing hurt to Zulfarhan.

Zulfarhan's mother Hawa Osman was allowed to give a victim impact statement on the date of the High Court sentencing. In the courtroom itself, Hawa called for justice to be served on her eldest son's killers. She stated that the family counted on Zulfarhan to help take care of the family, after her husband retired and drove a taxi for a living, and she herself worked at a secondary school canteen, and also to help his younger siblings to go to university, and she counted on Zulfarhan to take care of his parents in their twilight years. Hawa said she wanted an appropriate punishment equal to the loss of her child who was precious to her, and she wanted the courts to mete out a punishment to serve as a signal to society at large to prevent similar tragedies from befalling on other families out there, and expressed her hope that other parents will never feel the pain of losing a child like she and her husband did. It was further revealed in court that the death of Zulfarhan took a heavy toll on his parents' healths, and for Hawa, developed severe cataract problems in 2018 due to constant crying, and she had high blood pressure. Hawa also became fearful of letting her other children leave the family home to live on their own or even pursue their studies away from her, out of the fear that they might meet the same fate as their eldest brother, and Hawa also did not want her other children to join any uniformed services, viewing them as the direct cause of the permanent loss of her beloved son.

The prosecution confirmed that they would appeal against the High Court's decision, mainly the acquittals of the six main accused for murder and the sentences of the 12 other defendants.

Prosecution's appeal

Submissions

On 14 May 2024, two years and seven months after the High Court made its ruling, the Court of Appeal heard the prosecution's appeal against the six main offenders' acquittal for murder, as well as the sentences of the 12 other offenders for their sentences. Additionally, the 18 convicts of the Zulfarhan murder case also appealed against their sentences. However, before the hearing convened, the six men jailed for manslaughter dropped their appeal against their convictions for causing hurt.

Arguing before the appellate court's three-judge panel, the prosecution requested for the six principal offenders to be convicted of murder as originally charged, and also sought the death penalty for all six of them. The prosecution submitted that based on the opinion of forensic pathologist Dr Salmah Arshad, out of the 90 burn marks on Zulfarhan's body, 29 were third-degree burn injuries, which were scientifically the most severe level of burns, with visible wet muscle tissue and bleeding, such that these would result in death even with medical intervention. The prosecution also submitted that it was not disputed that the six main offenders – Muhammad Akmal, Muhammad Azamuddin, Muhammad Najib, Muhammad Afif, Mohamad Shobirin and Abdoul Hakeem – were directly involved in the scalding of Zulfarhan, with Abdoul Hakeem egging the five on while they each took turns using the steam iron to viciously and intentionally torture Zulfarhan. The prosecution also brought the court's attention to the trauma and heartbreak which the victim's family underwent due to the death of Zulfarhan.

On the other hand, the defence

Ruling by the Court of Appeal

On 23 July 2024, the Court of Appeal delivered the verdict. The court’s three-member bench – consisting of Justice Hadhariah Syed Ismail, Justice Mohamed Zaini Mazlan and Justice Datuk Azmi Ariffin – allowed the prosecution’s appeal, overturning the manslaughter conviction of the six main offenders and set aside their 18-year jail terms and hence found them guilty of the original charge of murder.

Explaining why they re-instated the original charges of murder, Justice Hadhariah, who prounounced the verdict in court, stated that the trial judge made an error in determining that it was unclear which specific injury on Zulfarhan's body led to his death. Justice Hadhariah added that the trial judge had also erred in stating that the court needed to identify the most serious injury to determine whether the six accused intended to cause death, given that the prosecution's burden of proof in this case was whether the first six defendants had the intention to cause the injuries, which was more of a priority than the need to prove any intention to cause the injuries that resulted in Zulfarhan's death. On the grounds that the original trial judge erred in convicting the six murder accused of manslaughter, the Court of Appeal overruled the trial court's decision, and convicted all the six main accused of murder.

In relation to the potential sentences of the six main offenders, Justice Hadhariah held that the murder of Zulfarhan was among the "rarest of the rare" cases of murder where it had greatly shocked both the judicial conscience and the society's collective conscience, and Zaulfarhan's death was caused by inhumane acts that equated to extreme and rare cruelty, so much so that any parent whose child ended up in the same situation as Zulfarhan would have felt the same sadness and pain deeply felt by Zulfarhan's parents. Justice Hadhariah quoted in her own words:

The court will not tolerate such incidents. What parent can bear the suffering of seeing their beloved child tortured in such a way that leads to their death in such a horrifying state?

Justice Hadhariah stated that it was necessary to uphold the principles of deterrence and retribution, and when touching on the aggravating factors, Justice Hadhariah stated that the victim Zulfarhan was truly innocent of the alleged theft of the laptop, and the first five defendants – Muhammad Akmal, Muhammad Azamuddin, Muhammad Najib, Muhammad Afif and Mohamad Shobirin – had tied up Zulfarhan and used an iron to scald him multiple times all over his body (including his private parts), and the six accused Abdoul Hakeem had directed the five men to torture and interrogate Zulfarhan over the missing laptop, and these acts were extremely sadistic and callous. Despite seeing the victim wirthing in pain, the six accused mercilessly persisted in torturing him and caused over 90 burn injuries on Zulfarhan's body, which demonstrated their blatant disregard for human life and compassion. The judge also noted that the six killers had deliberately concealed the victim to cover up their violent acts and also did not take the victim to hospital. Justice Hadhariah admonished the six men for continuing to blame the victim and stated that in truth, all of this, including the torture and eventual death of Zulfarhan, originated from their evil deeds.

Having took all the above factors into account, Justice Hadhariah did not neglect to mention that under Section 302 of the Malaysian Penal Code, the offence of murder carried the death penalty or a jail term of 30 to 40 years with not less than 12 strokes of the cane. The judge stated that the unanimous opinion of the bench was that, given the horrific and malicious nature of the murder, all the six accused – Muhammad Akmal, Muhammad Azamuddin, Muhammad Najib, Muhammad Afif, Mohamad Shobirin and Abdoul Hakeem – should be sentenced to the maximum punishment of death by hanging, which was the only appropriate sentence called for in this case.

Apart from sentencing the first six accused to death for murder, the same three-judge panel also enhanced the three-year sentences of the 12 other defendants to four years of imprisonment each, and hereby concluded the appeal hearing in a 93-page judgement.

Reportedly, Zulfarhan's parents and other family members were glad and heartened at the Court of Appeal judgement, and Zulfarhan's father stated that justice was served with all the six principal offenders sentenced to death for his eldest son's murder, although he did not lay his heart to rest since the six accused might further appeal to the Federal Court of Malaysia, the highest court of the nation. The lawyers representing the six murder convicts confirmed on the same day that they would appeal against the Court of Appeal's ruling.

See also

• Capital punishment in Malaysia