PUTRAJAYA: A storekeeper, who murdered his girlfriend by strangling her to death with her 'tudung', was spared the death sentence and jailed 30 years by the Federal Court today.
A three-judge panel comprising Chief Judge Tun Tengku Maimun Tuan Mat, Datuk Nordin Hassan and Datuk Vazeer Alam Mydin Meera made a unanimous decision for Shahrul Nizam Mohd Shah, 52, to serve the jail sentence from Oct 8, 2008.
"The death sentence is set aside and substituted with a 30-year jail term from the date of arrest," ruled Tengku Maimun.
The ruling came after Shahrul's defence counsel, R. Subash, applied for his client's jail sentence to be fixed at 30 years.
He said his client has been incarcerated for 16 years.
Deputy public prosecutor Tetralina Ahmed Fauzi did not object to Shahrul's application.
In March 2010, the Shah Alam High Court found Shahrul guilty of murdering Nurul Hazira Bharum, 26, who was his colleague, after he learnt that she was going to marry another man.
He committed the offence at his rented house in Kampung Gombak in Kuang, Rawang, between 9am and 10am on Oct 7, 2008.
Shahrul lost his appeal at the Court of Appeal on May 9, 2012, and the Federal Court upheld the conviction and death sentence.
In his defence, Shahrul testified that he and Nurul Hazira had planned to commit suicide by drinking poison "like Romeo and Juliet".
He claimed that Nurul Hazira forced him to drink the poison first.
He alleged that he had passed out and when he woke up, she was already dead and he ran to a neighbour's house for help.
He claimed that Nurul Hazira had told him that she was not in love with the man who proposed to her.
She had instead asked Shahrul to marry her, but he had asked her to wait as he had no money.
Post-mortem results revealed she had died of strangulation and there was no trace of poison in her body.
