Ahmed Salim (murderer)
Ahmed Salim (1 January 1989 – 28 February 2024) was a Bangladeshi painter who was convicted of murdering his Indonesian girlfriend Nurhidayati Wartono Surata on the evening of 30 December 2018 at a hotel in Geylang in Singapore.
Nurhidayati, who was born in 1984 and was five years older than Ahmed, hailed from the Indramayu regency of West Java, where she lived with her mother Warsem and stepfather Muradi.
[5][6] 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.
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 to carry weapons in the public.
[11][10] 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.
[12][13] 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.
[15][16][17] 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.
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 causes of death were both strangulation and cervical spine injury.
Warsem had once advised her daughter to move to Hong Kong to work for another family but Nurhidayati refused to out of loyalty to her Singaporean employer.
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.
[10][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.
"[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.
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.
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.
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 had taken 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 her.
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.
[41][42][43] As a final recourse to escape the gallows, Ahmed petitioned to the President of Singapore for clemency, and if successful, his death sentence would be commuted to life imprisonment.
[54][55] Human rights group Transformative Justice Collective, which released a statement about Ahmed's death sentence, revealed that his remains would be repatriated to the Bangladeshi city of Dhaka under the arrangements of the Singaporean authorities.
They even highlighted that Ahmed's life should have been spared in light of his adjustment disorder, which they claimed was sufficient to impair his mental responsibility at the time of the murder.
