Aapple WongA Malaysian teenage boy charged with the high-profile murder of a female schoolmate has been acquitted, with the judge finding the boy was mentally unsound during the incident.
He had fatally stabbed Yap Shing Xuen in a toilet at their secondary school on the outskirts of the capital Kuala Lumpur.
The killing of the 16-year-old girl had shocked Malaysia and sparked debate about the effects of social media on children.
Police previously had said they suspected social media could have influenced the boy, who was 14 at the time. The case was seen to have spurred authorities to limit children’s access to social media, which began earlier this year.
During the trial defence lawyers did not deny that the boy killed the girl, but argued that he had suffered from poor mental health for years and asked for his acquittal on the grounds of insanity.
An expert witness, a psychiatrist, testified that the boy had schizophrenia, and had suffered from mental illness and experienced delusions since he was nine years old.
The boy’s condition was said to have worsened during the pandemic and when he eventually returned to school. Lawyers had said that the boy would need medication for the rest of his life to manage symptoms.
On Monday the judge ruled that the boy would be acquitted, but also ordered for him to be detained and to receive treatment at a psychiatric hospital.
He will stay at the hospital until he is deemed fit to be released back to society, and would likely be subject to yearly assessments.
A defence lawyer told reporters on Monday that upon hearing the verdict, the boy appeared “neutral in emotion, but he understands what is going on, [that] it’s a very serious matter”.
The trial and verdict hearings were held in a closed court, which meant that the public and media could not attend.
Malaysian boy on trial for allegedly murdering girl in school
The case has profoundly shocked Malaysia and sparked a nationwide conversation about the negative effects of social media on children.
Much of this conversation was triggered by the contents of a note that police had found on the boy at the time of his arrest, which was leaked online and widely circulated.
Some people had compared the case to the Netflix series Adolescence, which featured a storyline about a young boy killing a female schoolmate and explored the theme of online radicalisation.
Last year, the country’s Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim was asked about the case as well as other recent cases of violence in schools.
He was quoted by local media as saying that “almost all of these issues stem from the use of mobile phones and social media”, and vowed to look into stricter measures.
Authorities have since put in place new rules which they say will protect children and reduce their exposure to harmful online content.
Since June, Malaysia has banned all children under the age of 16 from having accounts on major social media platforms.
Additional reporting by Diyana Nawwar
