Responses from Malaysia In light of Pannir Selvam Pranthaman's scheduled execution and its subsequent postponement, there were increasing concerns that Singapore was giving unfair treatment to Malaysians arrested and sentenced to death row and execution for drug offences, as there were rising numbers of Malaysians among the drug traffickers executed in recent years. In response to these concerns, Singapore's law minister
K Shanmugam argued that there is no inequality in treating foreigners and locals under the law for drug trafficking. He said the majority of Singaporeans favour the death penalty and it would be good for both sides if drug traffickers were caught by Malaysian authorities, as they could be dealt with according to Malaysia's laws (which also legalises execution for drug trafficking) and not have to worry about Singapore's capital punishment. Shanmugam emphasised that there should be no special treatment to Malaysian death row prisoners as it would undermine the integrity of Singapore's law. In July 2019, letters allegedly written by Pannir circulated on the internet. The
Singapore Prison Service rejected their authenticity and claimed that Pannir had earlier stated he did not write them, and stated that these letters were made up to orchestrate a campaign to further pressurise Singapore to spare Pannir's life. This was not accepted by
N. Surendran, a Malaysian human rights lawyer who represented Pannir's family. The
Attorney General's Chambers (AGC) also denied another allegation that they sent Surendran a threatening letter in relation to Pannir's case.
Poetry, songs and movie During the time he was on death row, Pannir began to pen poems and song lyrics. The lyrics to two songs were used by some Malaysian musicians to compose songs. Pannir's first song "Arah Tuju", which was sung by Malaysian rapper Santesh Kumar and released in April 2021, highlighted the plight of death row inmates and called for forgiveness and mercy. Pannir also wrote about his life on
death row at
Changi Prison and the impact it has on all the convicts, including him, who were awaiting their executions. On 27 April 2022, when drug trafficker
Nagaenthran K. Dharmalingam was hanged at dawn, Pannir penned a poem titled
Death Row Literature and dedicated it to Nagaenthran and mourned his death. On 27 September 2025,
Death Row Literature: A Collection of Poems by Pannir Selvam, was launched at an event at Gerakbudaya,
Petaling Jaya.
Case impact on Pannir's family Since 2020, due to the
COVID-19 pandemic in Singapore, Pannir's family were unable to travel to Singapore to visit him while Pannir was on
death row. While they acknowledged that Pannir was truly guilty and should be punished, Pannir's family also continued their search for new evidence, some of which they later provided to the authorities, to assist in Pannir's case in order to reopen his case and also rake up any possibilities for him to be spared the gallows and instead receive
life imprisonment. Pannir also expressed to his sister that he wished that he can die in Malaysia, the country where he was born and grew up in and loved, and he did not want to face death in Singapore. Due to Pannir's pending execution, his elder sister Sangkari and one of his younger sisters Angelia, having experienced their brother's case and its toll on their family, decided to become anti-death penalty activists in hope of bringing about more awareness about the death penalty and advocate for its abolition, as well as to ask for mercy for other death row convicts to give them second chances for rehabilitation and redemption. Sangkari was one of the activists asking for mercy on behalf of drug trafficker
Syed Suhail Syed Zin, who was originally set to be hanged on 18 September 2020 before it was postponed due to a last-minute appeal to delay his execution. Suhail, who was sentenced in 2015 for trafficking of heroin, lost his appeal in February and August 2021 respectively and was executed on 23 January 2025. Angelia, who became the founder and later president of non-governmental organisation (NGO) Sebaran Kasih, was one of those who pleaded to the
Singapore government to commute the death sentence of
Nagaenthran K. Dharmalingam, who was convicted of importing over of heroin in 2009, when the Singapore Prison Service informed Nagaenthran's mother that her eldest son will be executed on 10 November 2021. Nagaenthran's execution was suspended for five months due to an appeal and
COVID-19 infection, and he was executed on 27 April 2022 after losing his final appeal. Angelia also made efforts to raise awareness about the death penalty, including a talk on 29 July 2022 when she promoted her brother's newest musical work and spoke up about the death penalty. She also planned to start a funding initiative titled
Kitchen For Hope to provide financial help to the families of death-row inmates who were the sole breadwinners.
Lawsuit against Attorney-General Pannir became one of the 24 death row prisoners to file a lawsuit against the
Attorney-General of Singapore, claiming that there were miscarriages of justice and unfairness in their cases as they were denied access to legal counsel and had preparation of their appeals hindered, which made some inmates having to represent themselves in court without counsel to argue in their appeals. They stated that the court orders and fines made against lawyers for making baseless appeals had made lawyers fearful of reprisals from the courts and thus turned down the death row cases. However, on 3 August 2022, Pannir and the 23 others lost the lawsuit after the courts ruled that the allegations were not true, given that the lawyers had perfectly valid and legitimate reasons to not take up cases and cannot turn them down merely based on the court orders for the lawyers who had disciplinary problems and made baseless appeals.
Legal challenge against Pacc Act In December 2023, Pannir was one of the 36 death row inmates who filed a legal motion to challenge the newly-enacted Post-Appeal Applications in Capital Cases Act (Pacc Act), which was designed to manage the last-minute appeals made by death row prisoners who exhausted all avenues of appeal. They argued that this law was discriminatory and would cut off the last chances of death row convicts' access to justice and also amounted to the unfairness of legal processes for these inmates. However, Justice Hoo Sheau Peng of the High Court dismissed the motion, citing that the law was implemented in light of the rising number of inmates filing last-minute appeals before their executions and abusing court processes, and its purpose was to sift out appeals that were made without merit. She also said that the law was not passed for enforcement yet, and the legal rights of the death row prisoners were not breached by the provisions set out by the Pacc Act. A follow-up appeal by the same 36 plaintiffs was dismissed by the Court of Appeal on 27 March 2024.
Legal challenge against LASCO On 9 May 2024, Pannir and another 35 death row prisoners appealed to the High Court, arguing that the policy of the Legal Assistance Scheme for Capital Offences (LASCO) was not to assign counsel for death row inmates who filed further legal motions after exhausting their avenues of appeal against capital punishment and conviction, and this infringed the need to uphold fairness of court processes and constitutional rights of the prisoners, as well as breaching their access to justice and right to legal representation. However, 11 days after the appeal was filed, Justice Dedar Singh Gill found there was no reasonable
cause of action and dismissed the motion, as the LASCO was "perfectly entitled to adopt or change its policy regarding its provision of legal aid", and there could have been multiple reasons for LASCO to not assign lawyers for such convicts, such as the need to allocate resources to aid new defendants who were facing trial and appeal and deter possible abuse of court processes. The judge also stated that the lack of representation from LASCO in post-appeal applications did not deprive the accused persons of their right to life or personal liberty, which was especially so since all the plaintiffs in this case were already convicted and sentenced at this stage, and also exhausted their appeals against conviction and/or sentence, and their rights to access to justice were not violated by the lack of free legal representation, given that they still had the entitlement to engage lawyers on their own accord in any post-appeal applications. Aside from this, Justice Gill said while the applicants should not be deterred from filing applications with merit to prevent the
miscarriage of justice, but any motions launched "at an eleventh hour and without merit" should be regarded as a "stopgap" measure to delay the carrying out of the offender's death sentence. On these grounds, Justice Gill rejected the appeal.
Civil lawsuit Pannir, together with 12 other death row inmates, launched a civil litigation against the
Singapore Prison Service for releasing private letters to the Attorney-General's Chambers without the consent of the inmates who filed the motion. Pannir and the other plaintiffs argued that there was a case of prison correspondence misconduct, which involved the prison authorities sharing the letters of the plaintiffs with the AGC, and the inmates sought damages for unlawful practice, breach of confidence and copyright infringement. On 11 October 2024, the Court of Appeal's three judges –
Chief Justice Sundaresh Menon, Senior Judge
Judith Prakash and Justice
Steven Chong – ruled that the AGC and SPS unlawfully breached the confidentiality of letters from 13 death-row inmates. The judges emphasized the importance of prisoners' rights to maintain confidential correspondence, particularly with legal counsel. Although SPS and AGC justified their actions by stating they needed legal advice, the court found no need to share these letters. The court also upheld nominal damages for copyright breach but denied any compensation for breach of confidence.
Other developments Pannir's sister Angelia Pranthaman told a Malaysian newspaper in May 2022 that the family faced massive financial burden due to the legal costs of Pannir's appeals and the regular need to travel from Malaysia to Singapore, and they hoped that Pannir and the other Malaysians on death row can be allowed to return to Malaysia to continue serving their remaining time on death row before their executions, so as to help themselves and other families avoid having to continue bearing the travel and legal expenses. Also, Angelia revealed that ever since the
execution of Nagaenthran K. Dharmalingam in April 2022, Pannir and the other Malaysian prisoners were uneasy and uncomfortable about their imminent fates since the gallows was located nearby their death row cells in the same block. In another news update in February 2023, Angelia also added that she had to save up from her insurance agent job and depend on other family members to afford the expenses her regular trips to Singapore to visit Pannir at Changi Prison, and would also help Pannir pass on messages from the other Malaysian death row prisoners to their families who cannot visit them due to financial or health reasons. She was also worried that with the newly-enacted Foreign Influence (Countermeasures) Act (FICA), she would be prosecuted for being part of the foreign interference that attempted to meddle in Singapore's current affairs relating to the death penalty, which came under strong international condemnation for their executions of 11 drug criminals in 2022. It was revealed by Law Minister
K. Shanmugam on 3 September 2022 that after the executions of
Kalwant Singh Jogindar Singh and
Nagaenthran K. Dharmalingam, there were ten Malaysians (including Pannir) left on death row, and all of these remaining Malaysians were appealing for clemency while their executions were put on hold for the time being. In December 2023, Pannir's family stated that they were still holding out hope for Pannir, whose civil lawsuit was set for hearing in February 2024. Pannir's sisters Angelia and Sangkari stated that they were gradually resigned to the imminent possibility that Pannir would be executed, and Pannir himself told his family to not worry about him if it was decided that he would hang, since he had become a better person and they all had already tried their best to save his life. In an interview in February 2024, Pannir's former lawyer Too Xing Ji, as well as two other lawyers Ramesh Tiwary and
Eugene Thuraisingam, spoke about the mental struggles of lawyers who regularly handled death penalty cases, given that these individuals had to bear the huge burden of helping people at risk of facing the gallows, and the prospect of losing a client to the gallows could be emotionally devastating. Speaking about the case of Pannir (without naming him directly), Too revealed that back in 2019, two weeks after he secured a stay of execution for Pannir, he broke down inside a taxi at the grave possibility of Pannir being executed, and Too's friend, who was also a passenger of the same taxi, had to console him. In his diary entry regarding this instance, Too wrote, "Acting for someone on death row, the inevitability of relating to him as a human being, had taken a gigantic emotional toll on me that was for all intents and purposes, invisible, undetectable until it bursts out in torrents of tears that were no longer mine to retain." In December 2024, Pannir's family appealed to the Asean Intergovernmental Commission on Human Rights (AICHR) to intervene and pressurise Singapore to grant Pannir clemency. ==Second stay of execution==