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SINGAPORE: A Bangladeshi worker was sentenced to death on Monday (December 14) for murdering his maid girlfriend at a Geylang hotel two years ago.
Ahmed Salim, 31, was convicted of killing his girlfriend of six years after a date at the Golden Dragon Hotel on December 30, 2018, when she refused to leave another man for him.
Ahmed, who was engaged to another woman at the time, first strangled Nurhidayati Wartono Surata, a 34-year-old Indonesian national, with a towel. Then he tied a rope around her neck in several knots and twisted her head tightly.
He stole her valuables and left her body for a receptionist to find later that night. An autopsy found the cause of death to be strangulation and a cervical spine injury.
LEE: Bangladeshi worker on trial for murdering his Indonesian maid girlfriend at Geylang hotel
Judicial Commissioner Mavis Chionh found that his actions before, during and after the murder “demonstrated premeditation, convincing planning and methodical execution.”
He rejected Ahmed’s partial defense of a sudden and serious provocation: that the victim had humiliated him by saying: “He is better than you, he is better than you in the hotel, he is better in bed, he is better financially. If not Don’t believe it I’ll go with him next week, we’ll make a video and show it to you. ”
The judge determined that the victim had not said such humiliating words. Ahmed had not mentioned these words in his multiple police statements and in his interviews with the psychiatrist at the Institute of Mental Health (IMH).
The accusations came only a year and a half after the incident, when Ahmed was providing his account of the events to the defense psychiatrist.
“I think his explanations for not mentioning the humiliating words in the police statements and before (the IMH psychiatrist) are implausible,” the judge said. “I agree with the prosecution that the defendant’s story about the humiliating words was just that: a story.”
Even if the victim had said those words, the judge said that it was a premeditated murder, with Ahmed keeping a rope in his pants and taking it to the hotel and cleaning his bank account beforehand.
“On the totality of the evidence … I find that the defendant had decided even before December 30, 2018 that he would kill the deceased provided she refused to leave her new boyfriend and be with him again,” he said. Judicial Commissioner Chionh.
Ahmed had also admitted several times in his police statements that they showed his premeditated plan to kill the victim.
READ: ‘She has died. I also want to die, ” says a Bangladeshi man on trial for murdering his Indonesian girlfriend
In his testimony at the trial, led by defense attorneys Eugene Thuraisingam, Chooi Jing Yen and Hamzah Malik, Ahmed said that he considered the victim as his wife, even though they were not married.
She was diagnosed with an adjustment disorder at the time of the crime, but no link was found to contribute to this disorder and the crime.
