Woman who killed adoptive father over Sengkang flat loses appeal against 18-year jail term - CNA

The 35-year-old woman hacked her father to death after a dispute over the ownership of the family flat, which she believed her mother had left to her.

Police officers cordoning off a section of the common corridor outside a flat on Rivervale Drive in Sengkang, where a 67-year-old man was found with multiple wounds and later declared dead on Nov 4, 2022.

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Lydia Lam 16 Sep 2026 05:51PM (Updated: 16 Sep 2026 06:04PM) Bookmark Bookmark Share WhatsApp Telegram Facebook Twitter Email LinkedIn Set CNA as your preferred source on Google Add CNA as a trusted source to help Google better understand and surface our content in search results. Read a summary of this article on FAST. Get bite-sized news via a newcards interface. Give it a try. Click here to return to FAST Tap here to return to FAST FAST SINGAPORE: The Court of Appeal on Wednesday (Sep 16) dismissed a woman's bid for a lower sentence for killing her adoptive father, finding nothing wrong with the sentence of 18 years previously imposed.

The court also rejected Tan Qiu Yan's argument that her motive for the killing was because her father wanted to kill her, noting that she had not raised this claim previously.

Instead, the court found that her core motivation was a belief that her father, 67-year-old Tan Ah Bang, was depriving her of her right to own a flat promised to her by her late mother.

Delivering the decision on behalf of a three-judge panel, Justice Hri Kumar Nair said that Tan had also deferred her decision to kill her father for two months after buying a chopper, demonstrating that she had the capacity to control her actions.

The 35-year-old Singaporean pleaded guilty in July 2025 to a charge of culpable homicide not amounting to murder.

She qualified for the partial defence of diminished responsibility, where an offender's mental state reduces their responsibility for a criminal act.

She suffered from a delusional disorder of a persecutory type, with a background of schizoid personality disorder at the time of the offence.

People suffering from persecutory delusions typically hold the false belief that they are being obstructed, conspired against, attacked or harassed.

She also had delusional beliefs against a backdrop of grief related to the death of her adoptive mother, who was her primary social support.

Tan was adopted as a child by her adoptive parents. The family lived in a flat in Sengkang.

Her mother was diagnosed with cancer and died after promising Tan that she would leave her share of the flat to her.

However, after the mother died in August 2022, her share of the flat passed automatically to Tan's father.

Tan began quarrelling with her father during the funeral wake over her mother's financial assets and flat ownership.

She began suspecting that her father would kick her out of the flat and learnt from a law firm that her father had become sole owner of the property.

In documents flashed on a screen in court on Wednesday, Tan wrote that she believed her father was going to kill her, so she went to her favourite restaurants and watched her favourite Japanese anime because she would die soon, so she "better watch these again".

She also wrote: "I think he was going to kill me already, but I was one step earlier." 

On Nov 3, 2022, Tan heard her father on the phone and thought that he was scheming to get the flat. 

She called the law firm and was told that she could not be added as the flat's owner, and she began ruminating on whether to kill her father.

She also received a card from doctors offering condolences on her mother's death and began crying.

Then, she practised using her chopper and decided to give her dad one last chance, but when she asked if he was willing to share the flat with her, he said that he would not and told her to stop bringing it up.

She decided to kill him and caught him by surprise in the toilet, hacking at him with the chopper repeatedly until she got tired.

In another document flashed in the courtroom, Tan wrote that she had initially planned to kill herself afterwards, but was "very scared of the knife".

She also said that she did not want to kill herself immediately, so she went to finish watching her anime first.

Later, she called the police, who arrested her.

In a letter submitted to the court for the appeal, Tan wrote that the sentencing judge had said her father doted on her, just because he cooked for her and washed her clothes.

"This is not the truth," she wrote. She also wrote that she had hoped to have a "happy ending" and become closer to her father after her mother died, but he loved money instead of family.

Tan was represented by lawyers from the Public Defender's Office led by Mr Joseph Lum.

He argued for a lower sentence of between 12 and 15 years instead of 18, inviting the court to impose a lower sentence reflecting a higher degree of mental impairment.

He said Tan had interpreted her father's kindness on the day of the killing to mean that he was treating her well before killing her.

She also believed that he wanted to kill her in order to keep all the assets.

Deputy Public Prosecutors Chong Kee En and Gladys Lim urged the court to uphold the existing sentence, saying that it reflected her culpability and the decision to take her father's life.

The court said that although this case was undoubtedly tragic, the sentencing judge did not misapprehend the law and the sentence was neither wrong in principle nor manifestly excessive.

For culpable homicide not amounting to murder, Tan could have been jailed for life or for up to 20 years.

She cannot be caned because she is a woman.