Ahmed Salim (born 1 January 1989) was a Bangladeshi painter who was charged with killing his Indonesian girlfriend Nurhidayati Wartono Surata on the evening of 30 December 2018 at a hotel in Geylang. According to Ahmed, Nurhidayati expressed her intention to break up with him due to Ahmed's arranged marriage and her finding a new boyfriend, which made Ahmed planning to kill Nurhidayati during that meeting itself should she rejected his request to break up with her new boyfriend.

Although Ahmed's defence counsel submitted medical evidence to prove that Ahmed's mental responsibility was impaired as a result of adjustment disorder during the killing, the High Court determined that Ahmed had a clear intention to commit premeditated murder and never suffered from an abnormality of the mind when killing Nurhidayati. Hence, Ahmed was found guilty of murdering Nurhidayati under Section 300(a) of the Penal Code, and sentenced to death (the mandatory sentence for intentional murder) on 14 December 2020.

As of 2023, Ahmed Salim was the latest person to be sentenced to death for murder in Singapore.

Biography

Ahmed Salim was born in Bangladesh on 1 January 1989. He was likely the only child and son of his family.

After reaching adulthood and completing his education, Ahmed migrated from Bangladesh to Singapore in 2010 to seek and gain employment. He was working as a painter as of December 2018.^[1]

Relationship with Nurhidayati

In May 2012, while working in Singapore, Ahmed Salim first met his girlfriend Nurhidayati Wartono Surata, an Indonesian citizen who came to Singapore that same year to work as a maid. Nurhidayati, who was born in 1984 and five years older than Ahmed, hailed from the Indramayu regency of West Java, where she lived with her mother Warsem and stepfather Muradi. Nurhidayati was married with one son before she divorced her husband, seven years after they married in an unknown year. As of December 2018, Nurhidayati was working for a family that resided in Serangoon, which was the third family she worked for since her arrival in Singapore in 2012.^[2]

Since they first met, Ahmed and Nurhidayati became romantically involved, and Nurhidayati's family were aware of Ahmed's relationship with Nurhidayati. In November 2017, five years after they first met, the couple agreed to get married in December 2018. Ahmed was devoted to Nurhidayati, and regarded her as his wife despite not being officially married.^[3]

In May or June 2018, the sixth year of her relationship with Ahmed, Nurhidayati first met Shamim Shamizur Rahman, a Bangladeshi who worked as a plumber in Singapore, and became attracted to him. Upon getting wind of Nurhidayati's relationship with Shamim, Ahmed confronted her and subsequently, he contacted his mother and a friend to help him find a wife. Eventually, Ahmed's mother found a potential wife for him, and the marriage was arranged to take place in February 2019.^[4]

Eventually, sometime in July or August 2018, Ahmed and Nurhidayati reconciled and resumed their relationship in spite of Nurhidayati being reminded of Ahmed's arranged marriage. However, while they resumed their routine meetings on Sundays and constantly had sex, the couple's relationship became fraught with arguments regarding Nurhidayati's continued meetings with Shamim, and at one point, during one of these quarrels, Ahmed was so enraged that he used a towel to cover Nurhidayati's mouth, before he released upon Nurhidayati's struggle; Nurhidayati later apologize to Ahmed over this.^[5]

Three months later, in October or November 2018, Nurhidayati met Hanifa Mohammad Abu, a Bangladeshi and work permit holder who worked as a fitter in Singapore. Not long after, Nurhidayati fell in love with Hanifa and became his girlfriend. Shortly after they began dating, Nurhidayati told Hanifa about Ahmed and informed him about Ahmed's arranged marriage in Bangladesh. She assured Hanifa that she would end her relationship with Ahmed; Hanifa and Nurhidayati continued dating despite all this.^[6]

On 9 December 2018, Ahmed suspected that Nurhidayati was once again seeing another man. Nurhidayati did not deny it and admitted she became Hanifa's girlfriend, and asked Ahmed to go back to Bangladesh to marry his fiancée. Although Ahmed asked Nurhidayati to meet him again on 23 December with the view of persuading her not to break up, Nurhidayati once again expressed that she wished to end her relationship with Ahmed in view of his upcoming marriage.^[7]

Golden Dragon Hotel murder

Ahmed Salim, then 29 years old, was despaired over his relationship issues with Nurhidayati, especially after she decided to break up with him. Therefore, Ahmed formulated a plan to once again persuade Nurhidayati to not break up with him, and should that failed, he would kill her. The plan itself was concocted prior to meeting Nurhidayati on 23 December 2018, but Ahmed did not do it since Nurhidayati agreed to meet him on 30 December 2018. On the day of 30 December itself, Ahmed emptied his bank account and retrieved his savings of SGD$1,150, and he also bought a rope for the purpose of strangling Nurhidayati since he was aware that Singapore law did not allow people carrying weapons in the public.^[8][9]

On the late evening of 30 December 2018, Ahmed met up with Nurhidayati at the Golden Dragon Hotel in Geylang, which was Singapore's red-light district. Inside the room Ahmed booked, the couple had sex and they once again move to the topic of their relationship. Ahmed once again pleaded Nurhidayati to break up with Hanifa and hoped to reconcile their relationship. However, Nurhidayati was firm with her stance to end their six-year relationship, and refused to bow down to Ahmed's threat of killing her upon her refusal to reconcile. Therefore, Ahmed executed his plot to kill Nurhidayati, first using a towel to strangle Nurhidayati on the neck before he stopped and used the rope he brought along to loop around Nurhidayati's neck a few times and tied a knot, tightening the rope and strangled Nurhidayati for several minutes. As a result of the brutal strangulation, 34-year-old Nurhidayati Wartono Surata died.^[10][11]

In the aftermath of the killing, Ahmed stole Nurhidayati's money (SGD$30 in cash), mobile phone and EZ-link card, and he later left the hotel shortly after applying for a two-hour extension of his stay. He also contacted his roommate Khalid Md Abdul, seeking his help to remit SGD$1,000 in cash to his father, and also told him and some other colleagues he would be returning to Bangladesh. He also notified his employer that he would be returning to Bangladesh.^[12]

Investigations

Meanwhile, during the time Ahmed Salim was preparing to flee the country, the lifeless corpse of Nurhidayati was discovered by a hotel receptionist Lee Peng Yuan at 10.15pm, after Lee could not get a response from Ahmed's hotel room in site of attempts to contact him (since the extension time itself has ended). After the hotel contacted the police and hospital, paramedics arrived and they pronounced 34-year-old Nurhidayati Wartono Surata dead at 11.02pm.^[13][14][15]

According to Paramedic Sergeant Nabilah binte Sadali, she observed that Nurhidayati had a rope tied around her neck and she was bleeding from her nose and left ear, and her face was swollen. Forensic pathologist Dr Lee Chin Thye of the Health Sciences Authority performed the autopsy on the body, and he wrote in his medical report that he found ligature marks around Nurhidayati's neck, consistent with the rope around her neck, which was wound four times around her neck and tied with a knot. He also did not rule out that a towel had also been used to strangle the victim before the rope, and Dr Lee concluded that the cause of death were both strangulation and cervical spine injury.^[16]

The next day, on 31 December 2018, about 14 hours after killing Nurhidayati, 29-year-old Ahmed Salim, who by then was listed as a suspect, was arrested after he arrived at his employer's office, per the employer's request to meet Ahmed to discuss his upcoming return to Bangladesh. Ahmed, who celebrated his 30th birthday on 1 January 2019, was charged with murder on 2 January 2019.^[17][18]

At the time she died, Nurhidayati was survived by her then-11-year-old son, her stepfather and mother. Her family were shocked to hear from the Indonesian Embassy of Singapore about her death, and they expressed their sadness over Nurhidayati's death. She was scheduled to return to Indonesia on 15 January 2019, just about two weeks after the date of her death. They also said she had a wish to buy a new house for herself and her son, after she had bought land and a new house for her stepfather and mother with the income she earned as a maid in Singapore. Warsem had once advised her daughter to move to Hong Kong to work for another family but Nurhidayati refused to out of loyalty for her Singaporean employer.^[19] Representatives of the Indonesian Embassy of Singapore also expressed that they would continue to receive updates from the Singapore Police Force and make arrangements to bring Nurhidayati's body back to her hometown in West Java after the completion of the autopsy.^[20]

Trial

On 15 September 2020, one year and nine months after he killed Nurhidayati, 31-year-old Ahmed Salim claimed trial at the High Court for committing Nurhidayati's murder. Deputy Public Prosecutor (DPP) Hay Hung Chun and his three colleagues Senthilkumaran Sabapathy, Soh Weiqi and Deborah Lee were appointed as the trial prosecutors, while Judicial Commissioner Mavis Chionh Sze Chyi was appointed as the trial judge. Ahmed was represented by a defence counsel of three lawyers, consisting of Eugene Thuraisingam and his two law firm associates Chooi Jing Yen and Hamza Malik.^[21]

During his trial, Ahmed did not deny that he had indeed killed Nurhidayati, but he refuted the prosecution's contention that he has the intention to cause her death. He submitted that on that night, he was hurt by Nurhidayati's alleged insulting remarks that her new boyfriend Hanifa was better than him financially and in the bed. Ahmed even at one point expressed that he wished he could die since the death of Nurhidayati made him lose the will to live. Ahmed's lawyers also submitted the medical report of defense psychiatrist Dr Ken Ung Eng Khean to show that Ahmed's mental responsibility was substantially impaired by his adjustment disorder at the time of the offences, making him qualify for a defense of diminished responsibility. However, Dr Christopher Cheok, a government psychiatrist from the Institute of Mental Health, found that while Ahmed may have adjustment disorder, his symptoms were not severe enough for him to suffer from an abnormality of the mind at the time he killed Nurhidayati, and the prosecution also argued based on Ahmed's confession to the police that he had intentionally strangled Nurhidayati with the purpose to cause her death and as resulted from his anger over Nurhidayati's infidelity, and the prosecution even pointed out that his claims of losing his self-control under the alleged provocative words by Nurhidayati were not true, and sought a guilty verdict of murder.^[22][23][24]

On 14 December 2020, Judicial Commissioner Mavis Chionh delivered her verdict. In her judgement, Judicial Commissioner Chionh found that even before the day of the killing, Ahmed already developed a plan to murder Nurhidayati if she refused to leave her new boyfriend and return to him, and the signs of him emptying his bank account and preparing a rope to kill the victim were telling and corroborative of his intention to kill, and his admissions to the police about his premeditation to cause Nurhidayati's death also supported this contention. The judge also rejected Ahmed's claim that Nurhidayati had insulted him and thus gravely provoked him to kill her due to Ahmed only mentioning this for the first time during the trial after more than one year since his arrest. Ahmed's supposed suicidal thoughts were also not accepted by the trial judge.^[25][26][27]

Judicial Commissioner Chionh also did not accept the defence's psychiatric evidence that Ahmed's mental responsibility had been substantially impaired by his adjustment disorder, and determined that he was fully capable of exercising his self-control and making coherent decisions. She also noted that Ahmed's conduct prior, during and after the murder demonstrated that his crime was done out of "premeditation, cogent planning and methodical execution."^[28][29]

Therefore, Judicial Commissioner Chionh found 31-year-old Ahmed Salim guilty of murder under Section 300(a) of the Penal Code, and sentenced him to death. Under Section 300(a), the offence of murder was defined as one that carried the intention to kill and with pursuant to Section 302(1) of the Penal Code, the death penalty was the mandatory sentence for a Section 300(a) murder offence upon conviction.^[30][31]

After the end of sentencing, Thuraisingam confirmed that Ahmed intend to appeal the trial decision.^[32][33]

Ahmed was one of the two people to receive a death sentence in Singapore during that year of 2020. A month before him, on 12 November 2020, former property agent Teo Ghim Heng was found guilty of murdering his pregnant wife and four-year-old daughter back in 2017, and the High Court imposed two mandatory death sentences upon Teo after convicting him under Section 300(a) of the Penal Code for killing the two victims with intent to cause death.^[34][35]

Appeal and aftermath

On 12 October 2021, Ahmed Salim submitted a motion to the Court of Appeal, seeking to overturn his Section 300(a) murder conviction. Ahmed's lawyer Eugene Thuraisingam argued in the appeal that his client's defences of diminished responsibility and sudden and grave provocation should be ruled valid against the murder charge, and he also argued that the trial judge erred in finding that Ahmed had intended to commit premeditated murder with intent to kill, and hence the Section 300(a) murder conviction should be downgraded to a lesser degree of murder that did not warrant a mandatory death sentence; should the charge of murder did not carry the intention to kill (under either Sections 300(b), 300(c) or 300(d) of the Penal Code), the punishment would be either the death penalty or life imprisonment with caning. On the same date of hearing, the appellate court's three-judge panel, consisting of Chief Justice (CJ) Sundaresh Menon and Judges of Appeal Andrew Phang and Chao Hick Tin, reserved judgement.^[36][37]

On 19 January 2022, the Court of Appeal delivered their judgement, dismissing Ahmed's appeal against his conviction. CJ Menon, who read out the judgement in court, stated that the three judges agreed with Judicial Commissioner Chionh's trial findings that Ahmed possessed the intention to kill based on the steps he took to prepare the murder plot and the manner of his execution of the plan, and they also disbelieved Ahmed's claims that Nurhidayati had insulted him and caused him to be provoked into killing Nurhidayati.^[38][39][40]

The three judges also stepped aside to emphasise in their verdict that even if the charge an accused faced in court was one of intentional murder (with intent to kill) that carried the mandatory death penalty, the defence of diminished responsibility could still be used to rebut the charge and reduce it to manslaughter if successful. Still, looking at Ahmed's case, the three judges found that his adjustment disorder had not substantially impaired his mental faculties at the time he committed the offence of premeditated murder, and instead, they found that Ahmed was "rational, had self-control and was fully able to comprehend events at the critical moment when he finally decided to kill (the victim)", demonstrating his perfect ability to exercise self-control and rational thought up till the time he killed 34-year-old Nurhidayati Wartono Surata. Therefore, Ahmed's appeal was dismissed.^[41][42][43]

Since the loss of his appeal, Ahmed remained on death row at Changi Prison, and his execution date was likely not scheduled or if carried out, remained unspecified.

See also

• Capital punishment in Singapore

References