Singaporean actor Aliff Aziz and Malaysian actress Bella Astillah divorced for the second time in June 2024 after he was caught with actress Ruhainies in a Kuala Lumpur condominium raid, capping years of cheating allegations that included a claim of 11 affairs.
The couple married in 2016, when Astillah was just 22, and quickly became one of the region's most-watched celebrity pairings. But the marriage was soon overshadowed by controversy. In 2019 Aziz was photographed with several women, prompting Astillah to file for divorce. They reconciled in 2020 and carried on for another five years, though the scandals never fully stopped.
The final rupture came on March 9, 2024, when officers from the Federal Territories Islamic Religious Department detained Aziz and Ruhainies at a condominium in Kuala Lumpur on suspicion of khalwat, the offence of a man and woman who are not married or related being alone together in a secluded place. Two days later, Astillah filed for divorce a second time, and on June 13, 2024 Aziz pronounced the divorce at the Federal Territories Syariah Court. He agreed to give Astillah full custody of their two children.
A month earlier, Astillah had held an emotional press conference laying out the scale of the betrayal as she saw it. She claimed Aziz had cheated on her 11 times, not the four or five the public knew about, and made the stunning allegation that he had once had an affair with her own younger sister Eriqa, a revelation she said left her estranged from her sibling and regretting that she had disowned her sister instead of her husband. She also admitted she had deliberately grown close to actor Muaz Zabir to make Aziz jealous.
Aziz, for his part, confessed to being unfaithful, blaming a lack of self-control and saying his soul felt empty. The legal epilogue arrived in early 2025, when Aziz and Ruhainies changed their pleas to guilty on the khalwat charge at Malaysia's Syariah High Court and were each fined RM3,000, with three months' jail in default.
The saga played out across tabloids, TikTok and award-show stages in both countries, with netizens dissecting every development. For Singapore audiences it became a cautionary celebrity tale about serial infidelity, public forgiveness and the moment when forgiveness finally runs out.
The drama spilled onto award-show stages, where awkward on-stage encounters between Astillah and the women linked to her husband became viral moments. Entertainment writers in both Malaysia and Singapore described it as the region's messiest celebrity divorce in years, a story that kept tabloids fed for the better part of a decade.