Singapore jails Lankan for faking his death

SINGAPORE, Saturday- A Singapore man was jailed for three years after he faked his own death in a civil war shoot-out in Sri Lanka in 1987 to escape his creditors and claim S$331,341 ($243,600) in insurance money, a newspaper reported on Saturday.

The Straits Times said that Gandaruban Subramaniam fled Singapore more than 20 years ago -- harassed by creditors and illegal money lenders since the failure of his car rental business -- and moved to London to work as a street sweeper.

The 60-year old eventually settled in Sri Lanka where he managed to obtain a death certificate stating he had been killed in a shootout between Government troops and Tamil Tiger rebels, allowing his family to claim on his insurance policies.

But he returned to Singapore a number of times using a fake Sri Lankan passport and also remarried his wife in Sri Lanka in 1994 and fathered a son, their fourth child, two years later. The couple has since divorced.

Gandaruban's scam was discovered by a Singapore lawyer and he was arrested at Singapore's Changi Airport last October. His former wife and brother both served jail time for their part in the fraud, but have since completed their sentences. -Reuters.