In 1972, two men walked into a police hospital ward in the middle of the night. They were armed, and they were not there to visit. My name is Emir Gil, and I have been a practicing lawyer in Singapore for over 23 years. I was drawn to criminal law because of my father, a senior police officer.
I remember sitting in his office as a kid, looking at his files, and sometimes he would take my brother and me downstairs to look at the cells. It was an unusual childhood. A family dinner could be interrupted by a phone call, and my father would simply leave. He once told me about a night at Newton Circus when he recognized a wanted man.
He approached him and identified himself as a police officer. The man responded by pulling out a Smith and Wesson and pointing it at my father’s forehead. They stood there, staring each other down. Eventually, the man lost his nerve and ran off, sparking another manhunt.
Singapore in the 1950s and 60s was a violent place. In the 1960s, three-quarters of the population lived in overcrowded slums. Unemployment was high, and the withdrawal of the British army made things worse. Secret societies thrived in this environment, controlling vices, gambling, and dance halls.
Gangs were everywhere. There were frequent fights, stabbings, and shootings. It was normal, and that was the problem. I joined the police force in 1967.
My real name is Ahmed Osman, but my mother changed it when I was very young, so everyone calls me Atan. I was the eldest of ten children. I worked by day and played music by night. Those days, every cinema had gangsters around it.
You would go to the toilet and see parangs and bottles of acid hidden there, waiting for the next clash. It was an everyday occurrence. The gangs were organized. There were secret societies and triads involved in everything from human trafficking to drug smuggling.
There was even a notorious female gang called the Red Butterfly, whose members marked themselves with butterfly tattoos. The police responded by creating the Phantom Squad, a special unit meant to suppress gang activity and uncover their weapons. If you were caught as a police officer in those times, you had to be ready for a fight. I worked undercover.
In Malay, they call a detective a *mata gelap*, which means the dark side of the detective. When you go undercover, you have to blend in with the people you are investigating. Fear never enters your mind. If you are worried about not coming home, you should not join.
Undercover work is not glamorous. If you are found out, your life is in danger. There was a series of thefts reported at the beaches in Labrador. When I interviewed the victims, they all said the robbers had a gun.
I showed them my own weapon, asking if it was the same kind. They said no, the gun they saw was chrome and bigger. I had never seen a chrome gun in the force. I thought it might be a fake.
But then I saw them. I was driving near Gumman Circus when I spotted a Mini driven by a Malay man with long hair. I followed them as they drove down Alexandra Road and turned into Labrador. I knew if I stayed behind them, they would get suspicious, so I overtook them and parked at the top of a hill where a vendor sold pineapple water.
They pulled up beside me and came out to buy drinks. I looked at the man’s waist and saw a bulge that resembled a pistol. I told my man in Chinese to get ready. When they finished their drinks and left, I followed them toward the iron bridge.
I dropped my gun and shouted, “Police! Stop! ” The man, Mustafa, turned back. He said something to me in Malay, claiming he was also police.
When he saw me pull out my gun, he grabbed his partner, Mohammad Dom, and used him as a shield. I saw the chrome gun emerge from behind Mohammad Dom’s arm. I rushed forward, grabbed both of them, pushed my gun toward the man behind and opened fire. I was hit.
The bullet went through my neck. I felt a jerk and fell down. I was still conscious, and I could see my gun on the ground. I thought, pick it up, shoot again.
But my fingers would not move. I was completely paralyzed. At the hospital, the doctors saw my tattoos and assumed I had been shot by the police. I told them, “No.
I am the police. I was shot by the gunman. ”
Mustafa Hassan, the man who shot me, contacted his brother Wahab, and the two of them went on the run. They were known as the Wahab Hassan brothers, and they were the most notorious pair of criminals in 1972 Singapore.
Wahab was older, branded as a two-gun thug who would not hesitate to shoot to kill. Mustafa was younger, rash and temperamental. They had started with petty theft and moved on to robberies. A series of armed robberies near Gayla had become a serious problem for the police.
Before their final escalation, there was a robbery in 1972 involving a goldsmith shop run by a family. Both Wahab and Mustafa walked in and fired three shots at the woman, her husband, and their four sons. Thankfully, all the shots missed. It was utter lawlessness.
Two guys with handguns would just walk up and start shooting. The brothers got their guns from a man known as Shanghai Boy, later identified as Steven Low, a 24-year-old who had planned a series of robberies. He flew to Bangkok to purchase firearms and ammunition. Upon his return to Singapore in September 1972, Low was arrested.
He led the police to a flat in Toa Payoh, where they recovered a pistol, a revolver, 236 rounds of ammunition, a holster, and a dagger. Low had smuggled a total of five pistols into Singapore. Two were seized, one was recovered during his arrest, and the remaining two 9mm automatic pistols had already been given to the Wahab brothers. After I was shot, the police managed to arrest Mustafa, who was injured.
Wahab escaped. Mustafa was first housed at Changi Prison but was transferred to Outram Hospital for surgery on his hip. A few days after the shootout, Mohammad Dom surrendered to the police. The information was withheld from the press to protect the investigation.
Mustafa’s arrest was not the end. The police were worried about Wahab trying to rescue his brother, and they had reason to be. I was in the hospital at the time, recovering from my wound. Mustafa was in the ward opposite mine.
When the inspector in charge went to interview him, Mustafa thought I was dead and blamed Mohammad Dom for shooting me. The inspector came back to me, showed me a photograph of Wahab and Mustafa, and asked who shot me. I pointed to Mustafa. The inspector went back to him and said, “You think the detective is dead?
” He told Mustafa to look across the ward. When Mustafa turned his head and saw me looking back at him, he realized the truth and admitted he was the one who shot me. What Wahab did next was a daring move. He planned to strike in the twilight hours of the following day.
Two men visited Mustafa at the hospital. They were the boyfriends of Mustafa’s sisters, sent by Wahab as a reconnaissance party to assess the security around his brother. A lot of rumors were spreading, one said that the brothers were planning to rescue the injured one. On the 11th of December 1972, the day of the escape, a police constable named Chiao was on guard duty.
He had taken over the shift for a colleague. He arrived in the early morning, slightly tired and dozing off. He did not feel easy about the assignment because of the rumors, but he had no choice. He was new, so he had to go.
The brothers walked straight through the gate and pointed their guns at him. They took his key from the warden, released Mustafa, and then they started running. But they did not leave the constable behind. I was working in the hospital that day.
I was doing the usual checking on patients when I saw Mustafa with another man. It was Wahab. They both had guns, and they warned me and my nurse to keep quiet. Then they forced us to come with them.
They tied my hands and made us hide in the car whenever we saw police vehicles. We traveled in a taxi for quite a number of hours, going round and round the island. At one point, I said, “Take me alone, release them. ” But the brother said no.
Everyone must go. At almost daybreak, we landed at a rubber plantation. We disembarked and all of us walked up a hill near a dry point. I was told to sit down.
I believe their intention was to finish me off down there. I thought about my family, my brother, my siblings, my father. My mother had already passed away. I just accepted my fate.
This is the end of my life, I thought. Then I realized Mustafa was using my gun, my service revolver, and he pulled the trigger, pointing it at me. I heard a click, but there was no explosion. The gun did not fire.
The safety catch was on, or the round was a dud. I did not feel any pain. Before they could try again, a platoon of army soldiers at the bottom of the hill started their training and opened fire with blanks. The brothers thought the army was coming after them, so they became frightened and ran off toward the other side.
I was spared. I do not want to relive the scene. I still do not want to remember it. After the escape, the whole police force was mobilized.
It was one of the most massive manhunts in Singapore’s history. My father was part of the search party. They searched cemeteries, shop houses, and even remote areas where unsavory characters were known to hide. Every available officer was on 24-hour duty.
The police activated an immediate temporary alarm, known as the MTA, to alert all patrol forces to look out for the fugitives. Everyone was determined to arrest them at all costs. At one point, the brothers sought refuge in the home of a distant relative. A man named Isa came home at about 1 a.
m. and found Mustafa and Wahab there. Mustafa pointed a gun at him and asked if he recognized him. Wahab made Isa pawn a watch and took whatever else they could get their hands on.
By the time Isa made it to the police station, the brothers had already fled. I was a police officer in the reserve unit. We were on emergency duty, which meant 24-hour standby. We were patrolling in the evening when we received a message to proceed to the police academy on Thompson Road for a briefing.
At the academy, they told us there were gunmen at a certain location. They said they needed four volunteers. I volunteered. From there, our OC, Mr.
Sharma, brought us by Land Rover to a location and told us to follow him. We arrived at a cemetery at the five-foot way. We moved quickly toward the gate entrance. There was nothing in my mind to think about except the brothers.
That was our target. At the gate, there was a hut for the caretaker. As we moved toward it, we saw two figures running into the cemetery. We moved in.
We found the first hut empty. We moved forward to the next. Crouching, moving slowly, we heard a gunshot, followed by another. We dived to the ground and took cover.
Opening fire is not normal for a police officer, even with training. When you hear a gunshot, it is frightening, but also a lesson. The first time always teaches you. We saw a figure sitting behind a tree.
I told my friend to cover me, and I crawled forward. When I got there, the man was leaning against the tree, a revolver in his hand. I touched his hand, and it fell down. I moved forward to another figure about 50 feet away, lying on his back, also holding a gun.
He was dead. The Wahab brothers were found dead at a Muslim cemetery in Jalan Kubor. Wahab had vowed never to surrender. Some reports said that when the police surrounded them and used a loud hailer to ask them to surrender, Wahab instead opened fire, shot Mustafa at the temple, and then turned the gun on his own temple.
The coroner’s inquiry, however, stated it was a double suicide. It was a sad thing to see. I knew David Chan, the detective who had been shot. He was my good friend.
And the shooter, Mustafa, was my classmate. I remember him from school. He was a handsome guy with a good smile. We had fought once as kids, but those were just kids’ fights.
When the brothers were found, they had only $10 between them. They had robbed people of thousands and thousands of dollars, but in the end, they had almost nothing. They left behind a mother and a family. Wahab was only 24 years old.
Mustafa was only 21. The tale of the Wahab Hassan brothers became the talk of the town. The police hoped it would serve as a deterrent to future criminals. It did not.
Robberies, kidnappings, and murders involving firearms continued to increase. In 1968, there were 1,067 cases of robbery. By 1971, that number had doubled. In 1972 alone, there were 1,715 cases.
Because of this, the government introduced the Arms Offenses Act in 1973. It was designed to be a strong deterrent. If a criminal used a gun and caused harm or death, they could expect the death penalty. Even accomplices at the scene of a crime were subject to the same punishment, even if they did not carry a weapon.
The law was tough because Singapore is a small place. Without it, the situation could spiral out of control. I have worked as a defense attorney for 24 years. In that time, I have only handled two cases involving firearms.
The law works. But even as we punish criminals and prevent crime, we must accept a basic truth. As long as there are people, there will always be crimes. None of us knows what might push us across the line.
It depends on what it is like out there on the street. And that is how all law is based.
