"Before they take your life, they will try to take everything else they can from you – your freedom, dignity, rights, dreams, hope, value, and respect. Everything, like a vacuum cleaner, sucked away before our lives are ended," wrote P. Pannir Selvam in 2019, as he waited for his execution on death row.
After six years of harrowing uncertainty, that wait — and the fear that came with it — finally ended last week. On October 8, Pannir was hanged in Singapore for the crime of smuggling 51.84g of diamorphine into the country in 2014. His long agony is over.
Life in a Cell, Waiting to Die
“I was sentenced to death on May 2, 2017,” Pannir wrote in one of his letters. “The judge said that even though my involvement was just as a courier, he had no other choice because the Singapore prosecutor did not want to issue the certificate of cooperation.”
That was the moment he watched his family fall apart before his eyes. “All my family ever did was love me for who I am, and all I’ve given them is burden and pain,” he wrote. “That realisation hurts more than the sentence itself could ever do.”
From that moment on, his life became a slow erasure — of dignity, privacy, and humanity. His hair was shaved off. His belongings stripped. He was given a soap bar, a towel, and a bucket. “Not five minutes had passed, but I already felt alone,” he wrote. “It’s very dark and gloomy here. You could almost see all the sadness, disappointment, and loneliness the place bears. It feels like it could devour you alive.”
He described nights where the lights never went off, the air never cooled, and the mind never rested. “Most of the time I slept not because I wanted to, but because my eyes were too tired to stay awake.”
It was a world where hope was rationed — and even faith was a privilege one had to earn through despair. Yet through it all, Pannir found something most of us never do: peace.
A Final Letter of Grace
Just three days before his execution, Pannir wrote a final letter to his Singaporean lawyer, Too Xing Ji. In it, there was no bitterness — only grace.
“The outcome may not be what we had hoped for,” he wrote, “but let it not diminish the richness of the journey we went through, in which we learned about human experiences. We discover more about who we are, what we stand for, our purpose, and the best of us that we put forward in the principles that we believe in. This is us, not the outcome.”
“God will be with you and your family… You are amazing. Take care, Jesus loves you.”
He signed off, simply, as “Your dear friend, Pannir.”
His lawyer later said: “They may break your body, but your spirit shines brightly still. You live on forever in all of us.”
From Recklessness to Redemption
With his death, Pannir has reignited the debate about the death penalty. I don’t wish to wade into that argument - there is no point anyway - afterall, Pannir is no longer with us, for any further debate to do him any good.
But from his own reflections, one truth stands out: the person you are eight years ago is not the same person you are later. Time changes us — sometimes for the better, sometimes for the worse.
I don’t know the Pannir who was caught in 2017. But I feel I know the Pannir who was executed in 2025 — a chastened man who had washed away much of the recklessness, agitation and restlessness that perhaps brought Pannir 2017 to his sad fate.
Some might ask: would Pannir 2017 have ever become Pannir 2025 if not for his arrest and sentence? I don’t know the answer. But what I do know is this: while many may feel that Pannir 2017 deserved to be punished, few would have had the heart to kill Pannir 2025.
So the question must be asked — who took Pannir’s life?
Was it his own sins? The law? The judges who pronounced the sentence? The executioner who pulled the lever? Or was it us — you and I — who silently made up the “will of the people” who desired for people like Pannir to be hung to death?
The truth, perhaps, is that it was all of the above.
It took all of us to cause Pannir to be
The judges, lawyers, prosecutors and hangmen were only instruments of the law, but the will that guided those instruments came from the people. It was us.
Every time someone is executed, it is society itself that kills.
And if the condemned is a remorseless murderer or a brutal rapist, perhaps we can live with that.
But if it is someone like Pannir 2025 — broken, humbled, and reborn — can we still live with the knowledge that we too helped end his life?
If only one of us had mercy, Pannir would still be alive today.
The Voice He Left Behind
For those who wish to understand the man beyond his sentence, Pannir left behind a collection of poems titled Death Row Literature.
Each poem was written on the cold floor of his cell, with no table or chair — just a pile of old court papers as his desk and a bare ink refill gripped in hand.
These verses were born from unimaginable pain — the kind that comes from living each day under the shadow of death.
They are raw, honest, and deeply human — not merely poetry, but a voice from behind bars, a cry from a condemned cell, a testament to the resilience of the human spirit.
“Thank you so much to everyone who purchased this book,” he wrote. “The money you’ve spent will be donated to support vulnerable communities through charity. I’m truly grateful for your kindness and support — it means more than I can ever express from where I am.”
We cannot we know who Pannir was before.
But what we do know is that at the end of his life, even at the edge of death, Pannir had become the sort of person whose final act was one of giving.
In that, perhaps there is some of victory in this tragedy after all.
R.I. P pannir selvam pranthaman - when you left this world, may you have left all your sorrow behind as well. Wherever you, may you be with peace.
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