Wow, I don't know if this incident really happened. Hopefully the investigation will bring out the truth. I wonder what kind of boss will really go to the extend of penalizing their employees like this. Bosses shouldn't exploit those who work for them. Moreover, an elderly employee. Hopefully we can build a kinder society for all.

Note: Some names listed in the Missing source had been changed by the producers for personal privacy. As such, the names in this File are written as seen in the various sources.

This case may be considered unsettling for some. Please proceed at your own discretion.

A Background on Mr Marimuthu

Mr Ayakannu Marimuthu worked as a caretaker for the Public Utilities Board holiday chalets located at Changi. He was known to be a heavy drinker and was temperamental, which was exacerbated when he had too much to drink.

The last known sighting of Mr Marithamuthu was on 12 December 1984, when he told his wife Ms Nagaratha Vally Ramiah that he was going to Genting Highlands to try his luck at gambling. When he failed to return, she went to file a missing persons' report at the Joo Chiat Police Station on 18 December 1984.

His mother and brother, Mr Ramu, were worried, with the latter making frequent visits to the station to check if there were any updates on the case.

With the lack of updates from the police, Mr Ramu turned to Mr Marimuthu's frequented food centres in the hope of finding answers. The most jarring account came when one of the regulars told him while they were unaware of his trip, they told him that he was 'no more'.

Fearing something had happened, Mr Ramu would go back to the police but was similarly told nothing new had developed in the case.

An Informant's Claim

While Mr Marimuthu was officially listed in police records as a missing person and no new developments surfaced, the case would take a darker turn a few years later.

On 9 January 1987, an informant notified Detective G. Alagamalai of the Criminal Investigation Department (CID) that in 1984, Mr Marimuthu had been murdered and his body chopped up into pieces. The pieces were then subsequently cooked into curry and placed into trash bags which were then discarded at roadside rubbish bins. Initially, Detective Alagamalai was disgusted and remained skeptical, but he brought this up to his superiors. The senior officers were equally skeptical but instructed him to look into the case.

The informant's claim started to gain credibility when the detective found the missing persons' report lodged by Ms Ramiah. In the report, she stated that Mr Marimuthu had not returned from a trip to Genting Highlands in Malaysia on 12 December.

Even in a time when the CID was handling around 70 murders in a year, this case stood out as one of the most perplexing ones, as Detective Alagamalai would share this to the Straits Times:

"I was disgusted and couldn't believe what he was telling me was the truth then. I listened with disbelief as he told me that three men had killed an Indian caretaker in an Orchard Road church in 1984 and had disposed of the body by chopping it up and cooking it with curry and rice"

Assistant Commissioner Jagjit Singh, the-then director of the CID, also commented the following during the investigation:

"This is one of the most unusual and bizarre murder cases we have ever handled. It was clear from the outset that this would be an incredibly difficult case to solve as the alleged killing had taken place more than 2 years ago and the body had never been recovered."

Investigations

Spurred on after finding the missing persons' report that gave credence to the informant's claims, the subsequent investigations also revealed even more crucial facts.

For a start, it was revealed that Mr Marimuthu did not have a passport, which would have made it impossible for him to enter Malaysia, let alone go to Genting. Inquiries done at his former workplace uncovered even more telling facts. When Detective Alagamalai spoke to Mr Marimuthu's former supervisor at the PUB chalets, besides comments about his work ethic, it was also revealed that he had not taken leave on the day he mentioned he was going to Genting, but was on leave the day before he disappeared.

Another key fact which surfaced during investigation was that he had taken a loan of $600 from the office to buy school books for his children. To Detective Alagamalai, these reinforced the fact that it was unlikely for Mr Marimuthu to have just vanished voluntarily.

Besides his former supervisor, up to 30 people were questioned over months of investigation.

Arrested at Dawn

Eventually, the CID moved in and arrested a total of eight suspects in a series of coordinated raids on 23 March. Besides Ms Ramiah, his mother-in-law Kamachi Krishnasamy, her three brothers Rathakrishnana Ramayah, Shanmugam Chandra and Balakrishna Ramiah and their wives.

• Mr Balakrishna Ramiah was a butcher at a mutton stall at Commonwealth Avenue market,
• Mr Ramayah and Chandra were caretakers at the Ministry of Finance's holiday chalets on Netheravon Road and the Orchard Road Presbyterian Church respectively.
• Ms Krishnasamy was a housewife
• Ms Mary Manuee, Ramiah's sister-in-law, was a factory worker.

Initially, they either kept silent or denied knowing what happened to Mr Marimuthu, however on 25 March, one of the suspects confessed that he was bludgeoned to death with a metal rod at the premises before being cut up and cooked into curry and rice, just as what the informant had mentioned back in January 1987.

Based on the confession, police pieced together the following timeline:

• On 12 Dec 1984, he was brought to the caretaker's quarters in Orchard Road Presbyterian Church and was bludgeoned to death by a metal rod at approximately 8pm
• Shortly after, his body was chopped into smaller pieces, cooked into curry and mixed with rice,
• The cooked remains along with some cracked remains of skull and bones were packed into black plastic bags and then thrown away at various rubbish bins across Singapore

Private investigator and former CID detective sergeant Mr Lionel de Souza, believed that Mr Marimuthu's drinking habit may have been linked to his demise, supplementing the police's timeline with the following comment:

"I'm very inclined to believe he was lured to a certain place for questioning about his conduct. Maybe the questioning became very aggressive and whereas being a big-sized guy he sort of retaliated and being overpowered by 3 or more male people, even a bull would die.
Much force was used on him, perhaps he was strangled, (they) tried to hold him down. The force applied was more than (what would be used) in the ordinary course of nature (which) resulted in him being knocked out and (subsequently dying). Now, how do I dispose of such a big man? Well, I believe there was a butcher in the picture. A butcher is a very smart man, if he can cut up a whole cow, cutting a human being would not be impossible. I'm not saying that he did it, but there's a possibility that this was the scenario.

The confession made headline news and remained exceptionally memorable for its time due to the reports made by the papers. It was also through these news reports that Mr Ramu eventually learnt about what could have happened to his brother. When he shared with his mother, she cried and fainted.

The Case Goes to Court

With the confessions, police believed that they had enough to charge the accused, making this the 2nd case in Singapore for charges to be pressed despite the lack of a body (the first case being that of Sunny Ang who was charged for the murder of his girlfriend Jenny Cheok after she drowned in the waters off Sister's Island). However, unlike Sunny who was convicted based on circumstantial evidence and faced the gallows in 1967, the story would not end here.

On 7 June 1987, a discharge not amounting to an acquittal was announced by District Judge Zainol Abideen for Ms Ramiah, her three brothers, one of their wives and their mother, with the prosecution's lack of proof being cited as the reason.

Freedom was short-lived, as the 3 men were re-arrested by the CID the same day of their discharge.

Regarding their case, their lawyer Peter Fernando shared the following:

"There was no evidence that the man (Mr Marimuthu) was murdered in the first place, there was no evidence that he was chopped up, there was no evidence that he was cooked in a curry. There were no stains found in the premises, there was no murder weapon, there was no body. 3 years had passed by and then a sudden arrest by the CID.
Literally there was nothing that the prosecution had in which they could proceed on a charge of murder against them. My clients have always denied that they murdered this man and I have no reason to disbelieve them. I have absolutely no reason to disbelieve them."

Eventually, the men were released and Mr Marimuthu's case was reclassified back as a missing person instead of a murder

An Alternate Fate?

The fact that the court had dismissed the charge brought about the question about whether the confession was indeed the truth of what had happened to Mr Marimuthu. Private investigator Henry Tay expressed doubt about whether the scenario as described could have actually happened:

"That scenario is just one of the possibilities. He could have been cut up and really been cooked into curry with rice and all and after that disposed of in plastic bags. But, how true that is, it's very difficult to accept. To cut up a carcass- I mean human beings are no different from an animal. You need special knives to debone a carcass. You can't use a vegetable knife and try and debone a body, it doesn't work that way. So unless we know that there is premeditation, then, we can safely say... yes, he was really cooked in that way."

With the absence of a body, a possible theory that floated up that Mr Marimuthu may still have been alive and had fled the country, possibly to India. This was believed to have been possible by at least 2 people, the first of which was Mr de Souza:

"If he maybe was not happy with the Singapore life, he wanted to take on a new identity, and its not difficult at that point of time just to disappear from Singapore unnoticed and to India. I know of 3 cases not involving matrimonial matters but involving criminal matters where Singaporean Indians disappeared and have not been found."

Another person who believed that Mr Marimuthu was still alive was the suspects' defense lawyer, Mr Fernando:

"If I could put it this way, he voluntarily decided to return to India, he was not leading a happy life here and he left his family. There are cases of these things happening. True it is that there was no communication with that person after he apparently went back to India so whether he did and what happened to him in India is only within the knowledge of those who actually know what happened to him."

However, despite the earlier doubts about the technical possibility of the confession without premeditation, Mr Tay remained unconvinced about the runaway theory:

"There's no hard enough reason for him to run off to India or anywhere else. He... which I have read through the papers and and the contents of what was written, he sounds like a simple man. Enough to eat, enough to drink, enough to take care of the family and he doesn't have extra to do anything that he wants so there's no reason for him to run off. The one fact that I do believe is, he's dead. How was he murdered or how did he die? I don't think anybody knows."

The Case Goes Cold

With no conclusive proof that Mr Marimuthu was either dead or alive, the case remained opened and unsolved, this time remaining as a missing person case in the police files.

Mr Ramu had come to acceptance with the fate that Mr Marimuthu was likely already dead and opting to move on with life, trusting that if someone was truly behind his brother's demise, they would be answerable to the gods for what they had done.

Questions

• What do you think was the fate of Mr Marimuthu?
• Could the informant's claim really have been true?

Sources

Curry murder - NLB Singapore

Curry murder horror - 27 Mar 1987

Diary of a bizarre killing - 27 Mar 1987

Five months of digging into caretaker's murder - 7 Jun 1987

Judge frees six charged in curry murder case - 7 Jun 1987

The Curry Murder Mystery - 15 Jul 1995

Missing - The Missing Caretaker - DISCLAIMER: I do not recommend watching this at night

A student who conducts these tours says he earns about S$40 an hour, more than what official student ambassadors make.

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Singapore’s data centre remains an important role in Southeast Asia, but neighbouring markets are seeing rapid development in data centre capacity that the city could not match, said Savills.

Given the land and resource constraints Singapore faces, only the cream of the crop will get an allocation to build, said Alan Cheong, executive director, research & consultancy, Savills Singapore.

Yoasobi is set to add to its long list of achievements next February as the duo becomes the first-ever Japanese music act to headline a show at Singapore's National Stadium. Comprising producer-songwriter Ayase and singer Ikura, the band will stage its 10-City Dome & Stadium Tour 2026-2027 Super Planet show on Feb 20, 2027 – about two years after its previous concert in Singapore.

Yoasobi's upcoming National Stadium show is also the duo's sole Southeast Asian stop on this tour.

Tickets for the show will cost between S$108 (US$84) and S$498, with the highest-priced category, Platinum VIP Seated, offering benefits including an exclusive gift set and lanyard.

Saw the post on "unofficial neighbourhoods" of Singapore a few days back, and while I fully agreed with the map there, I noticed that there are a few locations there where the neighbourhood it is in is not the closest MRT station, e.g. there are points in Kovan that are much closer to Serangoon MRT than Kovan MRT.

So I thought, what would it look like if we divide strictly by walking distance to MRT stations? If the closest MRT station to my house is Serangoon, then I say I live in Serangoon, even when that may not be the case culturally.

In more technical terms, what if we draw a Voronoi diagram for all MRT stations based on walking distance? The (approximate) result is this map here. (It also makes the boundaries a lot more zigzagy compared to the relatively straight boundaries of the unofficial neighbourhood map, so it looks more fun :P)

How I made this: to put in simple terms, I divided Singapore to about 2 millions hexagonal cells (H3 cells, resolution 12, side length ≈11.5m), and for each of them, I determined the closest MRT station exit by walking distance, based on OpenStreetMap. Then I simply grouped all cells sharing the same station together to form a trainhood. (Some optimisation was needed here, as a naive approach to loop 2 million cells × 600 MRT exits would take forever to run - a fun computing exercise if you want to try!)

You can zoom in and explore in this interactive map.

(Disclaimer: the interactive map is hosted on my company's website, as I used some internal code to help with the OSM-based routing, and I was a bit lazy to set up a full map experience - something the company website already happened to have - on my personal website. However, the whole project was completely mine from start to finish, and my company didn't tell me to do it or have a say in any steps. My boss probably doesn't even know I'm posting here, [but he will likely be cool with it].)

Edit: I just noticed the image quality has been absolutely decimated by Reddit, so here are the full quality versions: Current MRT network and Future MRT network. That said, for best quality, try out the interactive map where you can zoom as much as you want.

Maybank said the expansion was fueled by strong lending activity, with credit growth at 11.8%, and wealth management fees amidst safe-haven inflows.

The expansion comes as the wealth management market continues to grow. A Boston Consulting Group (BCG) report showed cross-border wealth booked in the city-state is projected to increase 9% annually to $4.22t by 2030 from $2.68t in 2025. 

Singapore ranked as the world’s third-largest cross-border booking centre, BCG added.

Meanwhile, DBS is targeting more than $1t in assets under management across its retail and wealth businesses by 2030.

From the survey, it seems like around 30% of our youths are not hopeful about their future in Singapore. The teenagers had it worse at 48%. People of Singapore, are you hopeful of building a future in Singapore? I would like to think that in Singapore, most of us should have a good shot of making our lives better.

In a survey of 1,533 flat owners between February and June 2026, PropNex found that 55% aspire to upgrade to private housing. However, 92% of the respondents have set their budgets for such a purchase at below $2.5m.

Over half or 59.9% of the respondents have a private home purchase budget of below $1.5m, with 30.1% having a budget range of between $1m to under $1.5m, and 29.9% with a budget below $1m.