Singapore Legal Service Rajah joined the
Singapore Legal Service in 1963, becoming a deputy
public prosecutor and, later, senior state counsel with the
Attorney-General's Chambers. He handled a number of prominent criminal matters, including the
Pulau Senang prison riot and
Sunny Ang murder trials; and the
Gold Bar murder case, in which a Hong Kong seaman was found to have tried to unlawfully import 165 gold bars and 134 gold coins worth
S$86,076.70 without a permit. In September 1967 he led the prosecution of 262 members of the
Barisan Sosialis political party (dissolved in 1988) for
unlawful assembly and
disturbing the peace, Singapore's largest criminal trial. He eventually led the Chambers' civil and criminal sections until 2 August 1972, when he was appointed to head the Official Assignee and Public Trustee's Office. He was also the longest-serving Director of the Singapore Legal Aid Bureau. In 1985, he retired from the Legal Service and went into private practice, establishing the firm of B. Rao & K. S. Rajah. he held that the gender of a
transsexual person was to be determined according to biological criteria, which meant that
sex reassignment surgery did not alter a person's gender. Thus, a marriage between an individual who had undergone female-to-male sex reassignment surgery and a woman was void, being a marriage between two persons of the same gender. The decision prompted
Parliament to amend the
Women's Charter to permit transsexual people to marry in the capacity of their new gender. In 1992, Rajah J.C. annulled the marriage of a 21-year-old woman whose family had forced her into an arranged marriage. This was believed to have been the first judicial decision of its kind in Singapore. Two years later, in another landmark case, he applied to a
house-husband the principle that a divorced woman who has not contributed financially towards the acquisition of matrimonial assets is nonetheless entitled to a substantial share of them in view of her indirect contributions in the form of paying towards the household expenses or caring for the family.
Return to private practice Following his retirement as a judge, Rajah joined the law firm Harry Elias & Partners (now known as Harry Elias Partnership LLP) as a consultant. In addition, he served as Chairman of the
Law Society of Singapore's Committee on Guidance for the Legal Profession on Anti-Money Laundering. He was subsequently appointed a member of the Singapore Mediation Centre in 1998, and of the Singapore International Arbitration Centre in 2003. He acted as sole arbitrator and as chairman of
arbitral tribunals in domestic and
international arbitrations, in particular arbitrations taking place in Bangladesh and India. which argued that the
mandatory death penalty in Singapore was contrary to the
Constitution of Singapore, was obliquely criticized by the
Chief Justice Yong Pung How. Rajah, appearing before Yong C.J. in an appeal, submitted that a magistrate should have allowed his client to
compound her offence of abusing her maid, arguing that "[t]he idea of composition is international". The Chief Justice said that Rajah, a person of "tremendous experience and wide learning", had stated in one of his "wonderful articles" that the death penalty was unconstitutional due to
international law. However, he remarked: "I am not concerned with international law. I am a poor humble servant of the law in Singapore. Little island." On 22 March 2005, Rajah delivered a speech on the subject of his article at a LAWASIA conference in the
Gold Coast, Queensland, Australia. Another
Law Gazette article published in January 2006 which argued that the Court of Appeal's conviction of two men accused of murder who had been
acquitted by the High Court violated the constitutional protection against
double jeopardy was said by the
Ministry of Law to be "legally flawed". In his last case in 2008, he represented certain minority owners of flats in the Horizon Towers condominium before the
High Court in their bid to block the collective sale of the housing development supported by a majority of flat owners. He argued, among other things, that the right to acquire, hold and dispose of property was enshrined in the Constitution, but failed to convince the judge. Although the minority owners were unsuccessful at trial, the judgment was later reversed by the
Court of Appeal. Active in volunteer work, Rajah was the Chairman of the
Sri Aurobindo Society Singapore the Secretary and later the President of the Hindu Centre, and the Vice-President of the Singapore Anti-Narcotics Association. He also served with the
Hindu Endowments Board,
Kong Meng San Phor Kark See Temple,
Mount Alvernia Hospital and the Society for the Physically Disabled. ==Later years==