Goodbye Ram Tiwary

You don't look Indian to me...

The former Singaporean student found guilty of murdering two of his flatmates in Australia, has been jailed for a maximum 48 years.

With parole and time already served the earliest Ram Tiwary can expect to be released is 2042.
It was the climax to a murder investigation which began more than six years ago when the bodies of Singaporean students Tony Tan Poh Chuan and Tay Chow Lyang were found in the apartment they shared with Tiwary in this house.

Both young men had been clubbed to death with a baseball bat.
The horrific nature of the killings sent shock waves through the nearby University of New South Wales, where many of the students were also Asian.
Initially there were fears the murders were racially motivated.
But eight months later in a surprise breakthrough, police charged their flatmate Ram Tiwary with their deaths.

Then 23, Tiwary was on a scholarship awarded him by the Singapore armed forces.
Protesting his innocence, he was later found guilty and sentenced to life imprisonment.
However, an appeal court later ordered a re-trial on the grounds the judge had misdirected the jury.

The second trial, which lasted 26 days, again found Tiwary guilty.
And today he was told he could expect to spend the next 33 years of his life behind bars.
The judge said both murders were violent and savage which elevated the gratvity of the crime.
In the case of Tan, the second victim, this was not a spontaneous attack, he said, rather an execution to prevent him giving evidence against the offender.

The prosecution earlier claimed that Ram Tiwary had the "motive, opportunity and capacity" to carry out the murders.

The fact that he also owed Mr Tay several thousand dollars in back rent, might also have provided a motive.

Tiwary’s relatives, who earlier admitted they were still "terribly distraught," were not in court today. Nor were relatives of the dead men.

But the convicted Singaporean is unlikely to let things rest.

His defence team would not confirm whether he is likely to appeal, but Tiwary’s courtroom demeanour suggested he was unmoved by the length of his sentence.

He offered no response before or after the sentence was handed down.