Construction worker gets 30 years’ jail, caning over quarrel-turned-murder

2026-03-19 - 04:00

The Johor Bahru High Court spared Zhu Jia Hong the death penalty on grounds that the murder was not premeditated. (Pexels pic) PETALING JAYA: The High Court in Johor Bahru sentenced a Chinese national construction worker to 30 years in prison and 12 strokes of the cane for murdering his supervisor seven years ago. Justice Noor Hayati Mat handed down the sentence to Zhu Jia Hong, ruling that he failed to raise a reasonable doubt in his defence. The court also ordered him to serve his jail sentence from the date of his arrest on July 6, 2019. According to the facts of the case, Zhu quarrelled with his supervisor, Zhao Changxiang, over unpaid salaries on the night of July 6 at the hostel site office in Forest City, Iskandar Puteri. His colleagues testified that they only saw Zhu with a knife in his hand before he fled the scene. None of them witnessed him stabbing Zhao. Forensic pathologist Dr Zubair Abdul Razak, who conducted