Explainer | Yoga ball murder: Malaysian professor in Hong Kong who killed wife and daughter removed from Medical Council list
- Anaesthesiologist Khaw Kim Sun said to be ‘unfit to be a member of the medical profession’
- Gripping 21-day trial in 2018 shed light on extramarital affair and elaborate ploy involving carbon monoxide experiment on rats
A Malaysian anaesthesiologist who was sentenced to life imprisonment two years ago for killing his wife and daughter with a gas-filled yoga ball in Hong Kong has been deregistered as a doctor in the city indefinitely.
The Medical Council of Hong Kong, which regulates local doctors, removed Khaw Kim Sun from both its governing lists of general practitioners and specialists on Monday, slamming him for bringing “disrepute” to the profession.
An unanimous jury found the Chinese University professor guilty in September, 2018, for the murder of Wong Siew Fing, his 47-year-old wife, and their second child Lily Khaw Li Ling, 16, in 2015.
Murder is no doubt the most serious crime and the defendant had brought the medical profession into disrepute
During a gripping 21-day trial in 2018, the Court of First Instance heard how the anaesthesiologist, who was having an extramarital affair, murdered his wife and daughter by placing a leaking inflatable ball containing carbon monoxide, a lethal gas, in their Mini Cooper, and covered the plot by telling his colleagues that he needed the gas for an experiment.
In expressing his abhorrence, chairman of the inquiry panel Professor Joseph Lau Wan-yee wrote in the council’s findings: “Murder is no doubt the most serious crime and the defendant had brought the medical profession into disrepute”.
Lau said patients reached out for help because they had a well-founded confidence that “any medical practitioner whom they consult will be a person of unquestionable integrity, probity and trustworthiness”.
