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A Bangladeshi painter, who strangled his Indonesian girlfriend after she refused to leave the new man she was dating, told the Supreme Court yesterday that they had promised to marry at a mosque.
Ahmed Salim, 31, had even put a ring on his finger at a party with his friends in 2017. A photo of the event was 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.
Ahmed is on trial for the murder of his girlfriend of six years, domestic worker Nurhidayati Wartono Surata, 34, in a room at the Golden Dragon Hotel in Geylang on December 30, 2018.
In his statements to the police, Ahmed said that he decided to kill Nurhidayati after learning of her new boyfriend on December 9.
He told police he killed her with a rope because it was easy to put in his pocket, compared to sharp weapons like knives.
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 yesterday, Ahmed said that he had been angry at Nurhidayati for cheating on him many times, but he 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 he was giving his statements to 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.”
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.”
He cried again when he told the court that the investigating officer who took his statement reminded him of 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.”
The trial continues.
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