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SINGAPORE – A Bangladeshi painter, who strangled his Indonesian girlfriend after she refused to leave the new man he was dating, told the High Court on Tuesday (September 22) that he and the victim were engaged, in a mosque, to get married.
Ahmed Salim, 31, had even put a ring on his finger at a party with his friends in 2017, an event that was captured in a photo on his mobile phone and shown to the court.
“I treated her like my wife, I never looked at any other woman … the clothes she wore, the things she had, I bought them with my money,” he said through a Bengali interpreter. “Everything that a husband gives to his wife, I do the same.”
Ahmed is on trial for murdering his girlfriend of six years, domestic worker Nurhidayati Wartono Surata, 34, in a room at the Golden Dragon Hotel in Geylang on the night of December 30, 2018.
Prosecutors accuse him of intending to kill the woman.
In statements recorded by police after his arrest, Ahmed said he decided to kill the woman after he found out about her new boyfriend on December 9, 2018.
He also told police that he killed her with a rope because it was easy to carry in the pocket, compared to sharp weapons like knives that cannot be carried in public.
The defense maintains that his mental responsibility for the murder was reduced due to a psychiatric disorder and that it had been provoked.
Taking the stand on Tuesday, Ahmed said he had gotten angry at the woman for cheating on him many times, but let it go because he loved her.
The breaking point came when she told him that her new boyfriend was better in bed than he was, and he strangled her with a hotel towel. Then he removed the towel and wrapped the rope around her neck.
Ahmed collapsed when his lawyer Chooi Jing Yen asked him to describe his mental state when the statements were taken from the police.
He said he knew they would hang him. “I also want to be hanged. She has died and I also want to die. I do not want to live. Everything is finished for me,” he said.
When Judicial Commissioner Mavis Chionh asked who “she” was, Ahmed began to cry and replied, “The person who died, I don’t want to say his name.”
Ahmed broke down again when he told the court that when he saw the investigating officer taking his statement, he remembered his dead girlfriend.
“When I saw her, I hated myself so much that because of a woman, I destroyed my life, I destroyed that person. I came to Singapore and destroyed everything.”
He said he confessed to murdering the victim because he wanted “everything to be done quickly” and wanted the female officer to leave the room as quickly as possible.
When asked by Mr. Chooi what he meant when he said he wanted to kill the victim, Ahmed said that he was referring to the internal dialogue he was having with himself.
He said, “I was so angry. I was saying to myself, what should I do, should I slap her, should I kill her? What is the right way to handle this?”
The trial continues.
If convicted, Ahmed faces the mandatory death penalty.
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