29 Facts About Subhas Anandan

Subhas Anandan was a Singaporean criminal lawyer, who was known to have represented criminals in many high-profile cases that occurred in Singapore.

At the time of his death, Anandan was the senior partner in law firm RHTLaw Taylor Wessing LLP and headed its department in criminal law.

Subhas Anandan was a founding member and the first president of the Association of Criminal Lawyers of Singapore.

Subhas Anandan was the president of Cuesports Singapore, the national sports association for billiards, snooker, and pool.

Towards the end of his life, Subhas Anandan's health began to deteriorate and he died of heart failure in January 2015.

Subhas Anandan was born in post-British Raj on 25 December 1947 to Raman Subhas Anandan and Govindan Pushpanjaly in Travancore-Cochin.

Subhas Anandan attended primary and secondary school in the naval base, first at Admiralty Asian School and then Naval Base School, where he excelled academically.

Subhas Anandan returned home after three months and started his pre-university education at Raffles Institution in 1964.

In March 1976, Subhas Anandan was arrested by the police for suspected involvement in a secret society under the Criminal Law Act.

Subhas Anandan started the Association of Criminal Lawyers of Singapore in 2002, with the goal of raising the number of criminal lawyers in the country.

Subhas Anandan had started his practice handling mainly civil, accident and family cases but soon began gravitating towards criminal law.

Subhas Anandan had a personal mantra of "the most heinous offenders deserve their day in a court of law"; hence Anandan had claimed to have never rejected cases because of the offence the person had been charged with.

In 2013, Subhas Anandan was part of the 12-member steering committee to guide the development of the Singapore University of Social Sciences School of Law.

Subhas Anandan, who was formerly a stateless person, first applied for Singapore citizenship in 1972, but was informed a decade later that his application had been turned down.

Subhas Anandan tried again 2002, and was then finally granted citizenship.

Subhas Anandan's brother Surash was a football player and later worked as a flight attendant with Singapore Airlines.

Surash was coincidentally a former colleague of Constance Chee Cheong Hin, a air stewardess charged with killing a four-year-old girl, and Subhas Anandan happened to defend Chee during her trial.

Subhas Anandan developed this liking in his secondary school days, when he saw other students driving or being driven around in luxury cars like Mercedes Benzes and Jaguars.

Subhas Anandan often went to the Singapore Cricket Club to play snooker and billiards as a means of releasing work-induced stress.

Subhas Anandan spent most of his time at the Holy Tree Sri Balasubramaniar Temple, where he was the chairman of its board of trustees.

An active sportsman in his youth, Subhas Anandan was taking 22 types of medication every day because of his deteriorating health in the later years up to his death.

Subhas Anandan had three heart attacks, and had undergone a heart bypass and an angioplasty.

Subhas Anandan had lost one kidney to cancer and was a diabetic.

At around 2300 hours on 7 January 2015, Subhas Anandan died while hospitalised at Singapore General Hospital of complications from heart failure, which he was diagnosed with in 2014.

Subhas Anandan's death triggered an outpouring of grief especially amongst members of the law industry in Singapore.

Subhas Anandan was awarded the Legal Eagle Award of 2001 conferred by the Law Society of Singapore.

Subhas Anandan was honoured by the Association of Muslim Lawyers on 28 October 2014 for his substantial contributions towards the legal profession and being a champion of pro bono work for several decades.

Subhas Anandan represented convicted murderer Mathavakannan Kalimuthu in his 1997 appeal and 1998 clemency plea, and successfully convinced President of Singapore Ong Teng Cheong to grant then 19-year-old Mathavakannan clemency and commute his death sentence to life imprisonment.

Subhas Anandan defended mechanic Nadasan Chandra Secharan, who was charged with murdering his lover, and Subhas Anandan successfully convinced the Court of Appeal to overturn Nadasan's death sentence and issue him an acquittal on the grounds that he was not at the scene of crime and the prosecutors' weak evidence against him.