By Khushwant Singh

TEN days after a maid was hired to take care of Madam Choy Ah Moy last August, the 70-year-old kidney patient was dead.

Tri Lestari, the 24-year-old Indonesian maid who pleaded guilty to smothering the old woman, was given nine years in jail on Monday.

The High Court heard that the older woman had torn up a picture of the maid's 12-year-old brother, to whom she was close.

It was 'the proverbial straw that broke the camel's back', said forensic psychiatrist Stephen Phang of the Institute of Mental Health.

Tri Lestari had told him that Madam Choy had called her a dog, beaten her with a walking stick and also snatched food that she was eating and thrown it away.

Dr Phang said in his report that Tri Lestari was severely depressed at the time, and this impaired her judgment and diminished her responsibility for the crime.

For pleading guilty to a culpable homicide not amounting to murder, she could have been jailed up to 10 years or for life.

Read the full story in Tuesday's edition of The Straits Times.