List of major crimes in Singapore (2020–present)

For other major crimes committed in Singapore, see List of major crimes in Singapore.

This incomplete list is frequently updated to include new information.

The following is a list of major crimes in Singapore that happened in 2020 and beyond. They are arranged in chronological order.

2020

• 3 January 2020: Paul Leslie Quirk, a 48-year-old schizophrenic Australian, was arrested at his condominium at Compassvale after he allegedly killed his 43-year-old Singaporean wife Christina Khoo Gek Hwa by whacking with the mop stick many times, and threw his dog off their home's third-floor balcony, causing it to die from the effects of the fall. Initially charged with murder, Quirk was found guilty of a lesser charge of culpable homicide not amounting to murder as he was suffering from a relapse of his schizophrenia at the time he murdered Christina Khoo. Quirk was later sentenced to serve a 10 year jail sentence on 24 May 2021.
• February 2020: Four-year-old Megan Khung Yu Wai was allegedly killed by her mother and her mother's boyfriend. Three months later, in May 2020, the couple enlisted the help of a friend to dispose of the corpse by burning it. Subsequently, on 20 July 2020, after the girl's grandmother reported Khung missing after losing contact with the girl for months, the police managed to establish that Khung had died and arrested the three suspects. Khung's 24-year-old mother and the 33-year-old boyfriend were charged with murder, while the couple's 30-year-old friend was charged with helping the couple to abandon the corpse. All three suspects are currently pending trial with respect to Khung's alleged murder.
• 10 May 2020: Known as the Punggol Field murder, a 38-year-old jogger named Tay Rui Hao was attacked and heavily stabbed by another man, and although he called the ambulance while injured, he died while in hospital. It took about a week before the police arrested 20-year-old Surajsrikan Diwakar Mani Tripathi, who was caught by the CCTV cameras nearby the crime scene. Surajsrikan, who was charged with murder, was said to be emotionally affected by the date of his crime, as it happened to be same date when his father abandoned his mother (who was then pregnant with him) in 1999 some two months after their marriage, and the date of his military enlistment in 2018. He was assessed to be suffering from borderline intelligence, and both severe social anxiety disorder and obsessive compulsive disorder. These disorders had crippling effects on his life, leading to low mood and anger, but he was mentally sound and fit to stand trial. Surajsrikan was found guilty of murder and sentenced to life imprisonment with 15 strokes of the cane on 15 September 2022. The case of Tay's murder at the hands of Surajsrikan also prompted the government to pass laws to allow police to obtain data from TraceTogether for police investigations in every crime, including murder.
• 27 August 2020: 24-year-old Chinese national Cui Huan, who was angered at his 27-year-old wife Liang Xueqiu's affair with another man, pushed her to the ground before he beat his wife up several times as she lay curled up on the concrete floor in Boon Lay, where his wife worked. Having suffered fatal injuries to her head due to either the fall, the subsequent assault or both, Liang died as a result of bleeding from the brain. Prior to the events, Cui and Liang were married in 2016 and had a child together, and they first came from China to Singapore in 2019 to find employment. Cui was initially charged with murder, but the prosecution later dismissed the murder charge in November 2021 and instead indicted Cui on a lower charge of voluntarily causing grievous hurt. On 15 February 2022, Cui pleaded guilty to the lower charge in his trial and was sentenced to seven years' jail and nine strokes of the cane.

2021

• 2 April 2021: 49-year-old Naing Lin, a cleaner on a work permit from Myanmar, used a knife to stab his roommate Myo Kyaw Thu, a 49-year-old engineer who is also from Myanmar, after he was provoked by Myo's insult which took place in the aftermath of their argument over Myo's issue of borrowing money from others despite his job. After stabbing Myo five times, Naing left the flat to spend the night in another place before he returned the next day, having unable to contact Myo, who was discovered dead due to the excessive bleeding from the knife wounds. Naing surrendered himself to the authorities, who charged him with murder, for which he was convicted as charged and sentenced to life imprisonment on 22 September 2022 after Naing pleaded guilty. Due to his age limit, he was spared from caning.
• 12 April 2021: In the first case of an armed robbery involving firearms in 15 years, 38-year-old Aetos auxiliary police officer Mahadi Muhamad Mukhtar, who was riddled with huge debts, armed himself with his service revolver (loaded with five bullets) and proceed to rob a licensed moneylending company at Jurong. He managed to rob more than $24,800 from the company after threatening the employee with a gun and used part of the proceeds to pay off his debts while sending some of the cash to his girlfriend. On 13 September 2022, Mahadi was convicted of one charge of robbery and two charges of illegal possession of firearms and ammunition under the Arms Offences Act, and he was sentenced to 16 years and six months' imprisonment and 18 strokes of the cane. Mahadi's girlfriend was initially charged with dishonestly receiving stolen property in the same month of Mahadi's arrest, but after reviewing her case, the prosecution decided to drop their case and she received a discharge amounting to an acquittal in August 2022. In the aftermath, Mahadi's jail term was reduced to 14 years' imprisonment upon his appeal against his sentence, although his caning remains at 18 strokes.
• 19 July 2021: In a case known as the River Valley High School attack, sixteen-year-old Secondary Four male student attacked and killed another student, 13-year-old Ethan Hun Zhe Kai, with an axe & a kitchen knife in a fourth-floor toilet in River Valley High School. The attacker, who cannot be named due to his age, was arrested shortly after the incident and was charged with murder on 20 July. The attacker was found to have previously attempted suicide in 2019 and subsequently assessed at the Institute of Mental Health that same year. The murder charge was subsequently reduced to culpable homicide not amounting to murder, and the student pleaded guilty to the reduced charge on 1 December 2023. On that same day, the killer was sentenced to jail for 16 years by Justice Hoo Sheau Peng, after she found that the killer had killed Ethan Hun with a chilling sense of premeditation and planning, and also imposed the sentence for the sake of deterrence.

2022

• 11 January 2022: 35-year-old David Brian Chow Kwok-Hun, who misunderstood that his company was about to go bankrupt due to a wrong accounting report, attempted to commit suicide, and before he attempted suicide, David Brian Chow wanted to kill his pregnant wife Isabel Elizabeth Francis (aged 30) to spare her from the heartbreak of losing a spouse to suicide. Elizabeth Francis, who was 15 weeks' pregnant with a girl named Leah Francis, died after he stabbed her 15 times to her lungs while she was asleep. He failed to commit suicide twice before he decided to surrender himself to police. Originally charged with murder, David Brian Chow was in the end sentenced to seven years in prison for a reduced charge of culpable homicide not amounting to murder on 26 October 2023.
• 21 January 2022: A pair of 11-year-old twin boys Ethan Yap E Chern & Aston Yap Kai Shern with disabilities were found dead in a canal next to a playground along Greenridge Crescent. Their 48-year-old father Xavier Yap Jung Houn was arrested on 22 January and two days later charged with the double murder of his sons. Subsequently, it was revealed that he was suffering from major depressive disorder of moderate severity, and the charges of murder were reduced to culpable homicide not amounting to murder, and Yap was set to plead guilty on a later date. On 15 August 2023, Justice Vincent Hoong sentenced Yap to 14 years' imprisonment.
• 17 February 2022: A knife-wielding man was shot by police officers during a confrontation outside Clementi Neighbourhood Police Centre at around 11pm. The man was identified to be 49-year-old Soo Cheow Wee who was involved in an earlier assault case that happened around 8:40pm where police were alerted that a 41-year-old man was allegedly assaulted with a knife by the same suspect along Block 420A Clementi Avenue 1. The 41-year-old man has sustained injuries on his right arm and wrist. Preliminary investigations revealed that neither of them knew each other. In a statement, the police revealed that right after the first incident took place, Soo took a taxi to Clementi Police Division and was seen wielding a knife while standing outside the police station. Officers that were on duty approached Soo but he was shouting at the police officers incoherently and despite repeated instructions to drop his knife, the suspect refused to do so and charged towards one of the officers, who fired a shot at Soo. Soo suffered a gunshot wound on his left arm and was detained by the officers, before he was taken to hospital for treatment. Soo was charged in court on 18 February 2022 for criminal intimidation and voluntarily causing hurt with a dangerous weapon, and on 26 October 2022, Soo, who turned 50 before his September 2022 trial, was convicted and sentenced to 33 months' imprisonment for committing these armed assaults, and he escaped caning due to his age. In April 2023, the prosecution appealed for a sentence of at least five years' corrective training or a jail term of 57 to 63 months on the grounds that Soo's sentence was "manifestly inadequate" while Soo's defence lawyer Chooi Jing Yen sought to further reduce his client's sentence to 23 months. On 31 July 2023, Chief Justice Sundaresh Menon dismissed the prosecution's appeal but allowed Soo's appeal, and lowered his sentence from 33 months to 27 months, after finding that Soo's mental condition was not adequately taken into consideration by the district judge during sentencing. In the meantime, with respect to his current sentence, Soo would be released tentatively in August 2023 should he maintained good behaviour while in prison.
• 6 April 2022: Known as the Boon Lay slashing, 19-year-old Niswan Thiruchelvam and 20-year-old Muhammad Sajid Saleem both used bread knives to slash Praveen Raj Chanthiran and another man named Sarankumar Subramaniam at an open-air carpark, where a wedding was held nearby. The two victims (aged between 22 and 23), who were guests at the wedding, were sent to hospital for treatment, and both of them survived. After a manhunt, the two attackers were arrested and charged in court the next day for voluntarily causing grievous hurt to Sarankumar and Praveen, the latter whom Sajid wanted to hurt for contacting his girlfriend and thus led to him attacking Praveen and the other victim. Both Sajid and Niswan (who was married with a one-year-old daughter) were additionally charged for being a member of an unlawful assembly; since Niswan was 14 when he first joined a gang in 2016, his name was subsequently not reported due to offenders charged for crimes committed while they were underaged cannot be named. Sajid pleaded guilty to his charges on 2 November 2022 while Niswan was separately tried and convicted after he pled guilty to his charges a week later. On 30 November 2022, 21-year-old Sajid was sentenced to three years' imprisonment and six strokes of the cane while Niswan, who turned 20 before his trial, receives a heavier sentence of three years and three months plus six strokes of the cane; Niswan was also fined S$1,800 and given a 12-month driving ban for another unrelated traffic offence.
• 14 April 2022: A 46-year-old man was caught on video attacking a woman, believed to be his estranged wife, with a cleaver outside a restaurant she worked at along Beach Road, slashing her several times. The victim was saved by her colleagues, passers-by and workers from other restaurants who drove off her assailant using ladders, signs and chairs. During the ordeal, the man attempted to retaliate against the woman's saviors and was also seen slitting his own wrists. He was eventually cornered in another restaurant where police officers managed to subdue him with a taser. Both individuals survived and were taken to hospital for treatment. The man, a Chinese national, was later charged on 16 April 2022 for attempted murder.
• 4 July 2022: 26-year-old Singaporean PR (born in China) and his wife, a Thai national, fled Singapore by hiding in a container compartment of a lorry departing for Malaysia. Both of them were wanted in connection with a luxury goods scam amounting to S$32 million in undelivered goods. Two Malaysian men, one 38-years-old and the other 40-years-old, were arrested and charged for helping the couple depart Singapore illegally. An Interpol red notice was issued for the couple on 21 July. On 11 August 2022, they were arrested in Johor Bahru after they were found to be hiding in a hotel. They were brought back to Singapore on the same day, and charged in court on Friday, 12 August 2022. Investigations are ongoing.
• 10 October 2022: 19-year-old Sylesnar Seah Jie Kai attacked and killed his 47-year-old father Eddie Seah Wee Teck at their flat, Block 653 Yishun Avenue 4. Sylesnar Seah, the youngest of three children in his family, was arrested at the scene of crime. He was charged in court two days later on 12 October.

2023

• 20 August 2023: At Concorde Hotel along Orchard Road, 29-year-old Mohammad Isrrat Mohd Ismail and another man, aged 23, were severely injured during a brawl with more than ten people. Mohammad Isrrat was pronounced dead in the hospital while the other victim was hospitalized. 14 suspects (13 males and one female aged between 22 and 32) were arrested for the fatal assault of Mohammad Isrrat; one of the suspects, 29-year-old Asvain Pachan Pillai Sukumaran was charged with murder while another twelve male suspects are charged with various offenses ranging from armed rioting to causing hurt with dangerous weapons, and the sole female suspect is still under investigation as of 29 August.

• 15 August 2023: Su Wenqiang, originally from Fujian, China, pled guilty on April 2, 2024, to involvement in a money laundering scheme with nine other foreign nationals. He earned money via operating illegal gambling rings in the Philippines and scamming centers targeting Chinese victims before being arrested on August 15, 2023. A total of $2.2 billion USD was seized during raids targeting the syndicate.

• 30 October 2023: At Victoria Street, a 38-year-old man was charged after attacking 2 police officers with stun device; samurai sword among weapons seized. Various drug paraphernalia and controlled drugs – 236g of Ice, 11g of heroin, 56 Erimin-5 tablets and two Ecstasy tablets – were also found. The 32-year-old officer, Staff Sergeant Khairulanwar Bin Abd Kahar, suffered back injuries and was taken to the hospital. He has since been discharged with medical leave, the police said. The other officer, Sergeant (Sgt) Muhammad Afiq Yahya, suffered injuries to his left hand and leg.

2024

• 29 March 2024: 28 people residing in Singapore between the ages of 18 and 59 were arrested for various charges relating to child sexual exploitation. For five weeks, the Singapore Police Force collaborated with the Hong Kong Police Force and South Korean National Police Agency to arrest a total of 273 suspects, with the youngest being 12 years of age.

See also

• Capital punishment in Singapore
• Life imprisonment in Singapore
• List of major crimes in Singapore