PUTRAJAYA, April 17 — A former contractor escaped the death penalty when the Court of Appeal commuted his sentence today to 35 years in prison for the murder of his three-year-old stepson almost six years ago.
Khairul Izani Khairuddin, 36, also known as “Boy Tiger”, was also ordered to be given 12 strokes of the cane.
He was ordered to serve the prison sentence from the date of his arrest on November 12, 2018.
A three-judge panel consisting of judges Datuk Vazeer Alam Mydin Meera (now a Federal Court judge), Datuk Ahmad Zaidi Ibrahim, and Datuk Azmi Ariffin dismissed Khairul Izani’s appeal to set aside the conviction for murdering Muhammad Qairil Aqmal Abdul Hakim.
However, the panel allowed Khairul Izani’s appeal to set aside the death sentence and replace it with a prison sentence.
On August 26, 2022, the Klang High Court found Khairul Izani guilty of killing the child and sentenced him to death by hanging.
The offence was committed at a house at Jalan Bukit Indah 5, Taman Bukit Indah, Ampang, Selangor at 11am on November 8, 2018.
Zaidi, when delivering the court’s decision, said Khairul failed to show that the High Court judge had erred in his finding when dismissing his defence of mental insanity.
On the contrary, there was evidence proving that Khairul was sane during the incident as testified by his wife that her husband stopped beating the child after seeing the boy’s head bleeding and immediately took the deceased to a clinic for treatment.
He said the accused’s act of lying to the doctor that the boy was injured due to a fall in the bathroom was consistent with the behaviour of a sane person.
“We found that the trial judge cannot be said to be wrong in his finding that the accused’s actions in beating the deceased happened because of his hot temper and not because he was mentally unsound,” Zaidi said.
Based on the facts of the case, Khairul’s wife saw her husband beating the child repeatedly, stepping on him, strangling the neck, and banging his head against the wall until the boy’s head bled.
The woman did not succeed in stopping her husband from beating the child because she was heavily pregnant and also because the accused was a hot-tempered person.
Khairul was represented by lawyer Arik Zakri Abdul Kadir, while deputy public prosecutor Ng Siew Wee appeared for the prosecution.
— Bernama
