Longest-serving Indian-origin octogenarian prison executioner passes away in Singapore

Singapore's longest-serving Indian-origin octogenarian prison executioner Darshan Singh passed away on Sunday due to COVID-19 related complications, local media reported.

Singh, 89, was hospitalised on October 16 for a lung infection, his granddaughter Poojaa Gill said.

Singh, Singapore's longest-serving prison executioner, was buried this afternoon.

He stopped working for the prison service after 2005 after serving it for about four decades.

Singh, born in Malaysia's Sentul town near Kuala Lumpur, is a second generation Sikh Indian and converted to Islam after marrying a Malay Muslim, was the main character in a controversial book 'Once a Jolly Hangman: Singapore Justice in the Dock' by a British freelance journalist Alan Shadrake, who was also jailed in Singapore for contempt of court.

His wife Jeleha Haji, in an earlier interview, said that he was fond of telling anyone willing to listen how his Fridays were spent playing hockey and cricket.

Fridays, Jeleha explained, were also when he was the hangman.

In five visits by The New Paper, a Singapore newspaper, even as he struggled with dementia, he would always ''volunteer to tell us what he did on Fridays''.

A prisoner sentenced to death is hanged at dawn on Friday at Singapore's colonial-built Changi Prison after all judicial procedures are completed.

''Back then, shifts were shorter. He would leave for work at 5.30am, and after he was done, just after lunch, he'd be at the Singapore Recreation Club at the Padang,'' she said.

Perhaps it was his way of dealing with his feelings, she said.

(This story has not been edited by Devdiscourse staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)