99 Months

On 15 September 2003, two Singaporean students at the University of New South Wales in Sydney, Tony Tan Poh Chuan and Tay Chow Lyang, were brutally murdered in their apartment. More than eight months later, their housemate and fellow Singaporean, Ram Tiwary, was arrested for their murders. Although Ram proclaimed innocence, he was found guilty in 2006 and sentenced to life imprisonment. A successful appeal overturned the conviction and awarded him a retrial, which also resulted in a guilty verdict in 2009. But just two days after the second appeal in 2012, the New South Wales Court of Criminal Appeal overturned the 2009 conviction and acquitted him. He was released after spending 99 months in maximum security jail. What happened in the courtroom that compelled the most senior judges in the state to overturn two murder convictions within a day of the hearings? From the police claims of 'losing' evidence from evidence safes, revelations in the courtroom that the DPP had hidden crucial evidence from its own expert witnesses, solid leads that were inexplicably abandoned, detectives seemingly caught lying under oath and the Crown's theory of naked assassins, this is Ram's story of the 99 months that have left us with more questions than answers.