Family prays for miracle to halt execution of man with low IQ

family prays

Sarmila Dharmalingam is praying for a miracle. Her brother, Nagaenthran Dharmalingam, is set to be hanged in Singapore’s Changi Prison. “When I’m alone and I think of my brother, there is pain. But [we need to] be brave and keep on praying – anything can happen,” she told the BBC. In 2009, then 21-year-old Nagaenthran was caught trying to smuggle heroin into Singapore from Malaysia. Nagaenthran was initially due to be hanged on Wednesday morning, but was granted a last-minute stay of execution. On Tuesday he was found to have Covid-19 and the execution was further delayed. The Malaysian citizen was sentenced to death despite an assessment by a medical expert that he has an IQ of 69 – a level recognised as indicating an intellectual disability. But the Singapore government said he “clearly understood the nature of his acts and did not lose his sense of judgment of the rightness or wrongness of what he was doing”.(BBC)…[+]