Two Pakistani men were found guilty of murdering a compatriot over a gambling dispute and dismembering the body. A Singapore court today has sentenced death penalty to both the convicts.

45-year-old Rasheed Muhammad and 28-year-old Ramzan Riwan were convicted of smothering fellow nationalist 59-year-old Muhammad Noor to death in their lodging house in 2014, before hacking up the lifeless body with saws.

The victim’s torso and lower limbs were found stuffed in two separate luggage bags in the city-state.

Murder convictions by ‘Law’ in Singapore are punishable by death penalty that too carried out by hanging. The High Court Judge Han Teck said in his judgement “As the photographs and evidence of the discarded limbs and torso show, both Rasheed and Ramzan acted in concert after the murder as they did before and during it.”

Rasheed and Ramzan sold packets of tissues on the city streets for a living. The dispute started with an altercation when the pair sought to retrieve Sg $1,100 nearly US $776 that Ramzan had lost to the victim in a card game.

They used a shirt to smother the victim and later purchased saws to dismember the body. The court documents show a bag with torso was found by an 81-year-old man and the second bag with legs was found when Rasheed after was arrested.

The defense lawyers said that the pair did not intend to commit murder and blamed each other for the death.

Rasheed is a father of eight kids and Ramzan father of three, they will appeal the conviction their lawyers said. Earlier this month, the Singapore’s highest court upheld the death sentence of a former Singapore policeman for double murder.

According to prison statistics in 2015 four people were executed in the country, one for murder and three for drug offenses.

Rights groups have called on to abolish capital punishment in Singapore, which was carried over from British colonial rule, but the government argues that it is a deterrent to crime.

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AMandeep