Indonesian’s murder in HK leaves family devastated

JAKARTA, Indonesia – Sumarti Ningsih was still in her teens when she got married and had a son. In 2011, when she was around 20, she went to Hong Kong to find better paying work as a domestic helper, like tens of thousands of other Indonesians. 

But on Saturday, November 1, her mutilated and decomposing body was found stuffed inside a suitcase on the balcony of the plush Hong Kong apartment of 29-year-old British banker Rurik Jutting, in a sensational murder case that would shock the city and the rest of the world. 

There were injuries on her neck and she was barely recognizable. 

In her hometown of Cilacap in Central Java, her family received the devastating phone call from one of her acquaintances.

“We were informed by telephone that our daughter was murdered. I was very shocked, especially when I was informed that it was hard to identify the body,” Ahmad Kaliman, Sumarti’s 58-year-old father, a farmer, said.

Court documents on Monday showed she was killed on October 27, 5 days before her body was found.

“I want the murderer of my child to be sentenced to death. He killed her, sadistically, so he must be put to death,” he added. 

Jutting appeared in court for the first time on Monday, showing no emotion as he listened to the charges. He was taken to jail to await his next hearing on November 10. Hong Kong, however, does not impose the death penalty.

“I also plead for the governments of Indonesia and Hong Kong to return our child’s body as soon as possible. I want her to be be buried in Indonesia,” he said.

Sex workers?

Sumarti’s body was found after Jutting, who until recently worked at Bank of America Merrill Lynch, called police to his home in Wanchai district in the early hours of Saturday.

When investigators arrived, they found a naked woman with knife wounds to her neck and buttocks in the living room of the flat, on the 31st floor of a plush residential block. She was struggling for her life but died soon after.

This woman was later identified as 29-year-old Seneng Mujiasih, an Indonesian domestic helper who hailed from Muna, Northern Sulawesi, according to the Indonesian consulate. 

Sumarti’s body was found in the balcony a few hours later. 

Media reports say both were sex workers who pick up business in the late night bars and clubs that surround Jutting’s flat. Wanchai is known for its late-night drinking holes popular with expatriate revellers, and is home to a thriving red light district where sex workers, many of them from Southeast Asia, ply their trade.

Seneng – who goes by the name Jesse Lorena – told friends, “I’m going to have fun. I’m going to a Halloween party,” the night before her murder, Dutch DJ Robert van den Bosch, who said he had known Seneng for 4 years, told the Mirror.  

Consulate officials say both women were working illegally. Seneng’s employment visa had run out in 2012, and Sumarti arrived on a tourist visa on October 4.  

Devout Muslim

Sumarti’s father Ahmad, however, said his daughter first went to Hong Kong to work as a domestic helper and most recently had been a restaurant worker.

Born in Cilacap on April 22, 1991, Sumarti was only able to finish elementary school, according to Indonesian Consulate spokeswoman Sam Aryadi. 

Sumarti’s mother, 49-year-old Suratni, said her third child was once married to a guy from Semarang, Central Java, with whom she had a son. The boy, now 5 years old, lives with his grandparents and studies kindergarten in Cilacap.

In 2011, Sumarti went to Hong Kong to work as a domestic helper. She returned to Indonesia in 2013 and tried to find other means of earning a living. She even enrolled in a disc jockey school in Jakarta, her parents told Kompas.com. 

But she only stayed in the country for 5 months, choosing to return to Hong Kong again. She has been in and out of the Chinese territory twice since.  

A religious leader in Cilacap, Ngatiman, recalls her as a devout muslim. During her stay in Hong Kong, he said she used to send money to Cilacap for her family to perform the qurban, or the sacrifice of an animal during the Islamic Eid-ul-Adha feast.

Her devastated family is now at a loss. Ahmad said that his daughter had transferred some money to his bank account on October 22 but he had not heard anything from her since.

“We were asked to stay strong. What can we do now? It’s been destined like this,” her father Ahmad told BBC Indonesia. – with a report from Agence France-Presse/Rappler.com