She says daughter wants to kill her

The woman who sued a church over a supposedly botched exorcism is now accusing her daughter of wanting to kill her.

On June 29, 57-year-old Amutha Valli Krishnan called the police to her four-room flat in Ang Mo Kio at 9am to complain that her daughter Subashini Jeyabal had kicked her and threatened her with a knife.

Subashini, 28, is also alleged to have slapped her 62-year-old father Suppiah Jeyabal three times.

But the educational therapist, who was charged in July with criminal intimidation and causing hurt, claims her mother is making everything up.

After a pre-trial conference on Tuesday - the next one is on Oct 29 - her daughter's lawyer Louis Joseph of Regent Law firm said: "My client is asserting that her mother is delusional and that the events did not happen."

He revealed that there had been a dispute after Madam Amutha accused her daughter of having affairs with men from a pub and stealing money from home.

The mother claims that Subashini then placed a knife at her neck and told her in Tamil: "I will kill you. I will cut you."

A family friend intervened and the daughter left the house. No one was hurt.

If found guilty of threatening her mother with death, Subashini could be jailed for up to 10 years and fined.

In 2006, former national race walker Amutha had sued the Novena Church, two Catholic priests and six churchgoers, claiming she had a post-traumatic stress disorder after they forcibly tried to exorcise her in August 2004.

She claimed that after she fainted at the church, the defendants took her to a room where, for 2½ hours, she was harassed, restrained, assaulted and strangled.

During the 32-day trial, witnesses said they saw Madam Amutha crawl, march and speak in a gruff voice as she took on the personalities of a snake spirit, a dead soldier and Lucifer.

The private tutor lost the case in February 2009 and was made a bankrupt in March 2010 after she failed to pay $373,000 in legal costs to the defendants.

khush@sph.com.sg

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