SINGAPORE — A man who worked as a retail assistant at a FairPrice hypermarket outlet was sentenced to six months' jail on Thursday (Dec 5) for trying to poison his nephew’s beverage with stolen insecticide.

Nithye Kumeren Alagapan, a 26-year-old Malaysian, was angry with his nephew, a fellow FairPrice employee, who had scolded him for sleeping in the bathroom during work hours.

Nithye pleaded guilty to one charge of attempting to administer a poison with the intent to cause hurt. He could have been jailed up to 10 years and fined or caned.

Another charge of theft was taken into consideration for sentencing.

The court heard that both Nithye and his 20-year-old victim worked at the FairPrice hypermarket outlet in Nex mall, located in Serangoon.

Around 1.30am on June 15, after scolding Nithye, his nephew left a carton of chocolate milk on a table in the supermarket’s preparation room. He then left for his break.

Ten minutes later, Nithye took a bottle of Horti On insecticide from one of the supermarket shelves. 

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He went to the preparation room and poured some of it into the carton of milk, then discarded the rest of the insecticide in a rubbish bin.

The nephew later returned and almost drank from the milk carton, but decided against it when he smelled “something toxic” wafting from it.

He made a police report three days later at the Serangoon Neighbourhood Police Centre.

A report from the Health Sciences Authority showed that the insecticide — malathion — acts as a “human poison by ingestion and skin contact”.

In mitigation, Nithye’s lawyer TM Sinnadurai said that his actions were due to a moment of folly and that he was remorseful.

The two men could not get along for some reason and the younger man was “picking at every mistake” that Nithye made, so he snapped that day, the lawyer added.

Nithye — who hails from the northwestern state of Perak in Malaysia — has been working in Singapore since 2014 to clear his father’s debts of 40,000 ringgit, Mr Sinnadurai said.