A year after Singaporean cricket coach’s murder in Malawi, his family is still fighting for answers
Mr Arjun Menon was killed at his home in Malawi in May last year. His sister tells CNA that the family is still in the dark about what happened.
Mr Arjun Menon (left) and Ms Prema Menon in the early 2000s. (Photo: Prema Menon)
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SINGAPORE: Ms Prema Menon remembers her brother, the late Arjun Menon, not as the cricket coach the world knew, but as the boy she grew up with.
The oldest of three siblings, he was the “cool kid” she played with at their childhood home in Neptune Court, and the brother who lived by a “never punch down on people” attitude.
As adults, the siblings were more like orbiting satellites, the 42-year-old Ms Menon said.
They lived in different parts of the world – Ms Menon in Australia, Mr Menon in Africa, where he settled in Malawi in 2020 hoping to uplift the cricket community there, and their younger sister, who declined to be named, in Singapore.
Then in May 2025, while Ms Menon was back in Singapore on a visit, a call upended the family’s life.
It was a Sunday morning, and the family was on their way to a house viewing. The call came from an unfamiliar country code, so they let it ring out. But it kept ringing.
Ms Menon’s younger sister finally picked up. On the line was Mr Menon’s wife, screaming that he was dead.
Mr Menon, the coach of Malawi’s national cricket team, had been killed at his home in Blantyre, the country’s second-largest city, by unknown assailants. He was 48.
The next sequence of events played out in slow motion, Ms Menon said.
“I was just in shock,” she said. “My father used to say … the biggest curse is losing your child, and all I could think of was my parents. I didn’t really care about myself.
“I was just like, what am I gonna do? My parents have lost their child. How do we come back from this?”
More than a year on, Ms Menon and her family are still searching for answers. Despite repeated attempts to get updates, the family says it has struggled to obtain concrete information from the authorities in Malawi, where no known arrests have been made.
Ms Menon spoke to CNA over a Zoom call in mid-August from Melbourne, where she lives.
“It is so hard for me to sit here and know that me, my father especially, my sister and my late mother suffered this sort of violation, and nobody has the answer for it,” said the operations director for a non-profit organisation.
“I just want someone to answer for this crime, the person who did it. They shouldn’t be able to walk around like nothing has happened.”
THE SEARCH FOR ANSWERS
After her brother’s death, Ms Menon made preparations to travel to Malawi, a landlocked country in southeastern Africa about an 18-hour flight from Singapore.
All she knew then was that her brother had been attacked at 2am, and that his car and wallet had been stolen.
Her father, who spoke to Mr Menon daily, believed the attackers must have been strangers because he was “very well loved in the community”.
“And Arjun had never felt unsafe. He loved the place. I don’t think he ever mentioned any sort of threat or sort of thing.”
Ms Menon stayed in Malawi for about 10 days, laying her brother to rest there and trying to understand what had happened.
With little familiarity with the local system, the family entrusted communication with the police to the president of Cricket Malawi, where Mr Menon had worked as head of cricket operations.
But in June and the months that followed, they would hear the same, frustrating update: “They’re still investigating.”
The family also sought help from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA). But Singapore has no diplomatic representation in Malawi, and with the nearest embassy in South Africa, assistance was limited.
According to MFA’s website, the ministry can liaise with foreign authorities where necessary and provide a list of undertakers for reference if a family member or friend dies overseas.
However, it cannot investigate the death, give legal advice or make a police report on the family’s behalf, among other limitations.
Ms Menon also approached the Singapore police and several Members of Parliament.
The Singapore Police Force told CNA it had contacted Malawi authorities and would render the necessary assistance within the ambit of Singapore’s laws, should a request be made. It added that it had not received any such request from Malawi as of Aug 31.
The Malawi police did not respond to CNA’s request for comment despite multiple follow-ups. MFA declined to comment.
SLOW PROGRESS
In December, around six months after her brother’s death, Ms Menon’s mother died, and Ms Menon took a break from the search.
She resumed in July, calling Malawian officers directly. One officer told her he had sent a report to the embassy months earlier. But when she eventually received it from MFA, she realised it had only been sent on Jul 31, after her call.
The report offered no new information, only that police were still investigating.
In August, she finally made some headway. A new investigating officer told her that closed-circuit television footage and call logs had been reviewed, but nothing had turned up.
It was not much, but it was confirmation the investigation was still active, easing fears that the case was going cold.
She noted that the family had identified themselves to the Malawi police through MFA, and said that despite this, most updates had come from her own outreach rather than from the police initiating contact.
She also said navigating the Malawian system without established contacts had been difficult, and that having a clearer sense of which department or office to approach would have helped.
“I just think we need help. There’s something missing here to get us to the next stage, and I don’t think a private citizen can do it on their own.”
PROCESSING GRIEF
In July, Ms Menon began documenting her search for answers on Instagram, hoping to raise awareness.
“Right now, if you’re unlucky enough to lose someone in a country without a Singapore embassy … you figure it out as you go, through calls, emails, and a lot of trial and error, the same way I did.”
She said that as more Singaporeans live and work in such places, this was likely to keep happening to other families, and that this was not the fault of any individual but a gap in existing systems that did not account for such scenarios.
The social media page is also a way for her to process her own grief and the loss of a future she once envisioned with her brother, she said.
“He was there from the very beginning. He’s my first friend, your sibling … It’s very different from the loss of my mum because a loss of a sibling is like losing a part of your body. Like it’s no longer there.”
Since she began posting, Ms Menon’s inbox has filled with messages from people who knew her brother, some voice notes five minutes long, others recounting how their lives changed because of him.
At the end of August, his friends hosted a charity cricket and football tournament at Singapore Cricket Club in his honour. As of Monday (Sep 14) evening, over S$13,000 had been raised on Give.Asia.
The majority of the proceeds will go to the Maoni Orphanage in Malawi and the Vivekananda Cultural Centre in Singapore.
“Hindus, we believe that when your time is up, when your purpose is done in this world, you’ll be called back. That’s how we view it.
“Sometimes I like to believe that, but when I hear these stories, it’s very hard to believe because I feel like he has so much more to do,” she said, adding that her brother once told their father he would like to buy a farm in his retirement.
Mr Menon would likely be remembered by most for his sporting achievements. He played for the Singapore national team, and later coached Singapore to a gold medal at the 2017 SEA Games.
But Ms Menon hopes he will also be remembered for his values – the way he loved and felt intensely, and lived his life being friends with everyone.
“Lastly, my hope is that as much as Arjun loved Malawi, I hope some of that love is returned. For his death to go unanswered in a country he loved so much, I feel is a very sad way to end things.”
Source: CNA/er(cy)
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