A three-judge panel – led by Chief Justice Tengku Maimun Tuan Mat alongside Hanipah Farikullah and Vazeer Alam Mydin Meera – granted the application by former food and beverage industry worker N Kumaresan, 36, to commute his death penalty to imprisonment under the Revision of Sentence of Death and Imprisonment for Natural Life (Temporary Jurisdiction of the Federal Court) Act 2023.

Tengku Maimun ordered the prison sentence to be served from the date of arrest, which was June 10, 2014.

On Feb 8, 2018, the Shah Alam High Court sentenced Kumaresan to death after finding him guilty of killing A Sivasanggari, 22, in a hotel room in Petaling Jaya between 9pm on June 9, 2014 and 10am the following day.

The sentence was upheld by the Court of Appeal in 2019 and the Federal Court in 2020.

Earlier, lawyer Abdul Rashid Ismail, representing Kumaresan, submitted that his client was involved in a love triangle with his sister-in-law, who insisted that he divorce his wife.

He said Kumaresan also requested to be given a second chance to return to his family.

Deputy public prosecutor Eyu Ghim Siang requested a prison sentence of between 34 and 36 years because the victim had been strangled to death.