Arya News - The court found that the 15-year-old teen, who stabbed his 16-year-old female schoolmate multiple times to her death, was of unsound mind during the incident, which happened on October 14, 2025. A psychiatric report stated the teen suffered from an early onset of schizophrenia.
KUALA LUMPUR – The presiding High Court judge in the Bandar Utama school stabbing case called for a greater understanding of the signs of mental illness in children to avoid devastating consequences that come from being untreated.
In her 77-page full grounds of judgment, made available on Wednesday (Sept 23), Justice Adlin Abdul Majid said what the case had laid bare was how far a serious mental illness can progress in a child while remaining invisible to those around him, and how grave the consequences of that invisibility can be.
The court found that the 15-year-old teen, who stabbed his 16-year-old female schoolmate multiple times to her death, was of unsound mind during the incident on Oct 14, 2025.
A psychiatric report stated the teen suffered from an early onset of schizophrenia.
“Here, symptoms of a very early-onset and ultimately extremely severe psychotic illness were present from the age of nine, documented over five years in family accounts, school records and teachers observations, yet never once recognised as an illness.
“The signs were there – withdrawal, delusional thinking, a refusal to remove his mask, chronic lateness born of fear, and hallucinated voices. They were read, understandably, as behavioural or disciplinary problems rather than as a medical emergency. The cost of that misreading has now been borne by two families,” she said.
The judge said that court’s finding under Section 84 of the Penal Code – that the teen was not criminally responsible by reason of unsound mind – was not intended and should not be understood to diminish the life of the victim or to cause anyone to forget her.
“This is not a finding that the act did not happen, or that no one was responsible for it. It is a finding that the person who committed the act was at the time in the grip of a serious psychotic illness that had gone unrecognised and untreated for years, and that the law does not hold such a person criminally responsible for conduct he could not, at that moment, appreciate as wrong,” she added.
Justice Adlin said the victim was a young student with close family and friends and a bright future ahead of her.
“Her untimely and tragic death is an immense and irreversible loss to all who knew her.
“Nothing in these findings should be read as suggesting that her death was any less devastating or any less real, because it was brought about by an illness, rather than by malice. The grief of her family is not diminished by a diagnosis, and this judgment does not ask it to be.
“I am therefore of the view that if any measure of good is at all to come from this tragedy, it is that parents, our school system, the courts and the wider public arrive at a greater understanding of the signs and consequences of untreated mental illness in children, so that symptoms are recognised and treated earlier, and never again permitted to progress unaddressed, to a point of such devastating consequence so that other families may be spared what both these families have suffered.
“It is in this spirit that this decision was made,” she said.
On Sept 14, the High Court acquitted the teen of murder and ordered the boy to be detained and treated at Hospital Bahagia Ulu Kinta in Perak at the pleasure of the Sultan of Selangor.
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Malaysia’s Bandar Utama school stabbing: Teen’s mental condition had worsened into active psychosis at time of incident, says judge