Hero or Zero ?

On June 11, 1981, at 3am, Botak Chin was hanged.

He was 28.

His dying wish was to donate his organs for medical purposes.

This was rejected as he had not signed a written consent.

* One day after the birth date...dead at 28...and after 28 years...

The rise and fall of Botak Chin -by HALIM SAID -



BOTAK Chin or Wong Swee Hin, was a cold-blooded killer who terrorised Kuala Lumpur in the mid 1970s with a series of robberies, bloody inter-gang rivalries and run-ins with the police.

He was born in 1951 in Kuala Lumpur.

His father was a railway department pensioner who sent him to a Chinese school in Sentul Pasar and later, to an Englishlanguage school.

He quit school at 15 and worked at the wholesale market assistant in Jalan Tun Ismail for a year.

It was then that he became exposed to the underworld and joined Gang 306.

His fi rst armed robbery was on April 19, 1969.

After obtaining his fi rst gun, a .

22 revolver, he assembled his own gang and committed eight robberies.

He was eventually caught and sentenced to seven years jail.

He was released in November 1974.

On his release, he tried to selling vegetables, but soon found that the earnings weren’t enough.

In April 1975, he assembled a new gang.

On July 20, the gang struck a bank in Jalan Imbi and fl ed with RM95,000.

A portion of that (RM25,000) was used to buy a Datsun car.

A Chinese temple in Jalan Kolam Ayer was next on the hit-list.

Several mahjong players were gunned down and the gang grabbed RM10,000.

By this time, Botak Chin’s crime spree had attracted the attention of then City Criminal Investigation Department deputy head, Deputy Superintendent S.

Kulasingam.

Botak Chin, low on ammo, targeted policemen to bolster his ammo supply.

He took three pistols belonging to three policemen during a robbery in Sentul.

On Oct 26, 1975, he gunned down a security guard delivering money to a horse racing club, and escaped with RM218,000.

With his share of RM40,000, he returned to Thailand and bought more weapons to add to his armoury of 19 guns, fi ve grenades and 1,000 bullets.

He then became involved in a war with another gang.

As a result, the leader of the Five Finger Mountain gang, Tua Pui Lek, was killed.

Botak Chin’s gang member, Ah Wong was also killed.

However, his reign of terror came to an end on Feb 16, 1976 when he was shot six times by police at a sawmill in Jalan Ipoh.

Miraculously, he survived the shooting but was taken into custody.

He was sentenced to death by the KL High Court after being convicted on three charges under the Internal Security Act.

He was put on trial again in April 1, 1980.

This time, he tried to glorify himself as a modern day Robin Hood who robbed from the rich and gave to the poor.

On Jan 1, 1981, he made a desperate escape attempt from his death row cell at Pudu prison, stabbing three warders.

He was unsuccessful, and was seriously injured in the process.

* taken from here not the 1st picture tho