By Sujin Thomas

THE lawyer for Ram Puneet Tiwary yesterday laid out the reasons why the Singaporean is not guilty of brutally murdering his two flatmates in the suburban Sydney apartment they shared six years ago.

In a fiery opening address, Senior Counsel David Dalton stressed that his client had willingly assisted police throughout their investigations and answered all questions asked. There was no way Tiwary, now 29, could have murdered Singaporeans Tony Tan Poh Chuan, 27, and Tay Chow Lyang, 26, in September 2003.

Tiwary had called the police, taken them to the crime scene, and stuck around to tell them what had happened.

ABOUT THE CASE

TWO Singaporean undergraduates were found brutally murdered in an apartment unit in suburban Sydney on Sept 15, 2003. Seven months later, a fellow Singaporean student Ram Puneet Tiwary - who shared the apartment with the two dead men - was arrested and charged with the double murders.

Tiwary told the police that he had been asleep at that time and woke to find his friends dead.

After a trial in 2006, he was convicted by a jury and sentenced to life imprisonment with no chance of early release. The conviction was quashed by the Court of Appeal last December as the judges felt the trial judge had instructed the jury improperly on certain evidence.

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