Two women charged with murder
They are accused of killing their domestic worker from Myanmar
Two women were charged with murder yesterday.
Gaiyathiri Murugayan, 36, and Prema S. Naraynasamy, 58, are accused of murdering Ms Piang Ngaih Don at their Bishan flat sometime between Monday and Tuesday.
Neighbours said Ms Piang, 24, was a domestic worker from Myanmar who had started working for the family about a year ago.
She was found motionless in the ninth-storey flat at Block 145, Bishan Street 11, by the police, who were alerted at about 11am on Tuesday.
Paramedics pronounced her dead at the scene.
A resident on the 10th storey, Madam Jenny Wu, 62, said she rarely saw Ms Piang.
The resident, who has been living at the block for the last 30 years, told The New Paper last night that she did not "notice or hear anything strange" during the night before the dead woman's body was found.
She only realised that something was amiss when she saw police officers outside the accused women's flat on Tuesday afternoon.
SHOKING
She said: "I only learnt of (Ms Piang's) death when I read the Chinese newspaper. It was shocking news for the residents here."
TNP understands that there were six adults - including Ms Piang and a Chinese couple who had rented a room - living in the ninth-storey unit.
There were also two children in the flat, neighbours said.
Another 10th-storey neighbour said Ms Piang looked skinny when he last saw her five days ago.
The man, 62, who declined to be named, told TNP he last saw Ms Piang hanging towels on railings on the ninth and 10th storeys.
He added: "She wore a face mask and would always say 'sorry, sir' whenever I walked past her as she was hanging the laundry.
"But I honestly did not mind because she was polite."
When TNP visited the Bishan flat yesterday, there was nobody at home.
There were towels securely fastened with clothes pegs on the railings nearby.
The two accused will be back in court on Thursday.
If found guilty, they face the death penalty.
"I only learnt of (Ms Piang's) death when I read the Chinese newspaper. It was shocking news for the residents here."
- Madam Jenny Wu, a resident of the same block
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