1. Punch Coomaraswamy was a Singaporean judge, diplomat and politician who served as Speaker of the Parliament of Singapore between 1966 and 1970, and Singapore Ambassador to the United States between 1976 and 1984.
17 Facts About Punch Coomaraswamy
1. 2.
Punch Coomaraswamy had served as Singapore's Ambassador to Australia, Bangladesh, Brazil, Fiji, India, and Sri Lanka.
3.
Kandiah Coomaraswamy was a medical doctor who served in the then Straits Settlements Medical Service from 1916 to 1955, when he retired.
4.
Punch Coomaraswamy received his early education at the English College in Johor and later obtained his law degree from the University of Nottingham in England.
5.
Punch Coomaraswamy practised in the firm of Braddell Brothers as an advocate during the 1950s and 1960s.
6.
Punch Coomaraswamy was a visiting lecturer in the law of evidence at the University of Singapore from 1959 to 1969.
7.
Punch Coomaraswamy was the Acting President of Singapore from 5 March to 5 May 1968.
8.
Punch Coomaraswamy served as a Supreme Court judge from 7 September 1984 to 15 October 1993.
9.
Punch Coomaraswamy, who found Nyu guilty of committing armed robbery with a rifle, took into consideration that Nyu never harmed the victims and willingly gave himself up to the police, and thus he erred on the side of leniency and sentenced Nyu to the minimum sentence of life imprisonment and the mandatory minimum of six strokes of the cane.
10.
Punch Coomaraswamy was the trial judge of the 1988 Lee Chee Poh case.
11.
In 1990, Punch Coomaraswamy was one of the two judges presiding the trial of Chia Chee Yeen, a National Serviceman who was charged with the fatal shooting of his army superior Daniel De Rozario in 1987.
12.
On 16 July 1993, three months before his tenure as a judge would end, Punch Coomaraswamy sentenced a 32-year-old delivery worker named Bala Kuppusamy to 23 years' imprisonment and 24 strokes of the cane for robbing, sodomizing and raping a 20-year-old student in October 1992, in addition to similar crimes perpetuated against three other females.
13.
Punch Coomaraswamy admonished Bala for not learning his lesson from his first stint in prison, which ended for just seven weeks before Bala commit these second string of offences against four innocent females, and he added that Bala deserved no sympathy.
14.
Punch Coomaraswamy was therefore arrested and sentenced to jail for 42 years and given 24 strokes of the cane.
15.
Punch Coomaraswamy married Kaila on 9 November 1956 and had three children from the marriage.
16.
Punch Coomaraswamy died in his sleep on 8 January 1999 as a result of chronic lung disease caused by smoking.
17.
One of his sons, Vinodh Punch Coomaraswamy, is currently a judge in the High Court of Singapore.