Sundarti Supriyanto (born 1979) is a former Indonesian maid who killed her employer and her employer’s daughter in Bukit Merah, Singapore. She was originally in line for the death penalty when she faced two charges of murder under section 300(c) of the Penal Code for the two deaths, which became known as the “Bukit Merah double murders” in Singapore.
Subsequently, Sundarti, who claimed to be abused by her late employer prior to the killings, was convicted of lesser charges of culpable homicide not amounting to murder and sentenced to life imprisonment in Singapore. Her case became known as one of the notable cases where maids had killed their employers or the employers’ kin, and her case was also a legal representative benchmark of the legal defence of “grave and sudden provocation” against murder in Singapore.
Early life Sundarti Supriyanto, the eldest of three children in her family, was born in Indonesia sometime in 1979. She grew up in the village of Mengge, Magetan Regency, East Java.
Sundarti’s family was financially poor since her childhood. It can be assumed that she did not receive much schooling and had to work to provide for her family. In an unspecified year, she was recruited by a maid training agency, who would train young Indonesian women in doing household chores like cooking and cleaning before allowing them to work as foreign domestic maids in other countries. Sundarti was said to have agreed to do it since her family needed money and lived a hard life. Sundarti also learnt to speak English through the agency’s training programme.
Employment in Singapore First-time employment in Singapore After she completed her training in Jakarta, Sundarti was first offered a job as a domestic maid in Singapore, and her first employers were a Chinese couple with three children. Sundarti first set foot in Singapore in April 1999 and began working for the Chinese family. She had once stolen from the family but the agency did not do anything. After two years working on this job in Singapore, she returned to Indonesia.
Second employment in Singapore In September 2001, after returning home from Singapore, Sundarti’s father died for unknown reasons. As a result, Sundarti decided to undergo further training to get a better-paying job in order to better assist her family financially during these difficult times. After completing further training, Sundarti returned to Singapore in April 2002 to accept a second work offer.
The second job offer came from 34-year-old Angie Ng Wee Peng, the wife of 44-year-old businessman Drake Poh Teong Kang, who made headlines in 1998 for his plans to open a casino and resort in Myanmar. The couple have two children - an elder daughter named Crystal Poh Shi Qi and a younger son named Leon Poh Ye Sheng - who were born in 1999 and 2000 respectively. After an interview, Ng decided to hire Sundarti on a trial basis, and she was to work in both Ng’s office in Bukit Merah and the Poh family’s flat.
Bukit Merah double murders On 28 May 2002, 22-year-old Sundarti Supriyanto killed her employer Angie Ng and Ng’s daughter Crystal Poh, due to her being harshly abused and starved by Ng to the point of losing control.
Prior to the incident, Sundarti had been experiencing both physical abuse and deprivation of food by Ng, who often would find fault in her and sometimes deprive her of food for days. Sundarti first realised this when she saw two other maids, known to her as Aminah and Jami, having their hairs pulled or got slapped for any small errors in their work. At one point, she saw Aminah being thrown out of the house for perceived mistakes in her work, leading to police coming to the doorstep. After both Aminah and Jami resigned from their jobs, Sundarti began to bear the full brunt of mistreatment.
Initially, Sundarti, whose main job was to prepare food for the family and care for Ng’s two children, would get to help herself to some biscuits or bread in the office or leftovers from the Poh family’s meals, but gradually, Ng told her she was dissatisfied with Sundarti’s work performance and disallowed Sundarti from touching the family’s leftover food. Also, whenever Drake Poh was not at home having meals or going overseas, Ng did not allow the maid to eat. She was also displeased with Sundarti asking for food from her or any of her employees from her office, and even told the employees to not give the maid any food. Still, Sundarti would continue to ask for food, and the employees of Ng’s office sympathized with her and thus would give her biscuits or bread whenever Ng was not there looking. Sundarti even said once that she was forced to eat the faeces of Ng’s children.
On the fateful day of 28 May 2002, at around morning in Ng’s flat, Sundarti was given two packets of instant noodles by Ng, who grudgingly did so after the maid incessantly told her about her hunger. However, Ng asked her to eat the noodles raw, and told her to eat in the kitchen toilet. Sundarti, who put the noodles and sauce in a plastic container filled with hot water, only got to eat a few bites before Ng took her to her Bukit Merah office. Over there, later in the afternoon, Ng again physically abused the maid over not properly caring for the children. This caused Sundarti to finally snap and angrily asked why did Ng have to cause hurt and humiliation to her daily. Ng, in response, scolded her and scratched the maid’s face in the face of her defiance. This sparked a fight between the women.
According to Sundarti, after grabbing ahold of a rope, she strangled Ng with the rope during the course of the fight, doing so with more strength than she initially did, as her thoughts about Ng’s sadistic behaviour and the humiliation she went through under Ng’s treatment made her angrier than ever. She stopped after Ng became limp, and as the maid was just about to stand up and try to calm the two children down, Ng suddenly kicked her on the leg and caused Sundarti to lose balance and fall. Ng then threw a kettle of boiling water at the maid and took a knife and tried to stab her. Sundarti, who was scalded by the hot water, was said to have carried Ng’s elder daughter Crystal Poh and used her as a human shield against the attacking Ng, who persisted using the knife to stab at Sundarti, and these blows allegedly landed on Crystal’s chest. After the little girl got stabbed, Sundarti somehow managed to overpower Ng and during the scuffle, inflicted several mortal blows onto Ng and finally killed her.
After the murders, Sundarti finally calmed down and she thought of using fire to get rid of the evidence, and wanted to commit suicide by burning herself due to her fear of getting arrested and facing capital punishment. This led to her having to go hire a taxi and go to buy petrol from a petrol station. She also bought two lighters from a woman smoking nearby the block and thus set alight the office after pouring petrol all over the office and its possessions.
Still, even though she was ready to leave herself to die, Sundarti decided to protect Leon (who was still alive at that time) from the fire and thus took him out of the burning office, where a few witnesses had gathered outside, and called an ambulance and firemen to put out the fire and bring the maid and boy to hospital.
Initially, in the hospital, to several witnesses and the police, Sundarti gave a false account that it was a group of black-clothed, masked men who went into the office and set fire in it, causing the fire to kill Ng and Crystal. It was only on 10 June 2002, when autopsy results showed stab wounds on Ng and her daughter, that the police decided to arrest Sundarti as a suspect and charge her with murder.
Trial Proceedings On 18 August 2003, Sundarti Supriyanto first stood trial in the High Court of Singapore for the double murder charges relating to the deaths of Ng and Crystal. Sundarti was represented by Singaporean lawyer Mohamed Muzammil bin Mohamed, who was assisted by Johan Ismail. The prosecution was led by Deputy Public Prosecutor (DPP) Jaswant Singh, who was assisted by his three colleagues Eugene Lee, Aaron Lee and Adrian Yeo from the Attorney-General’s Chambers (AGC) of Singapore. Initially, the trial should start in April 2003 but due to the 2003 SARS outbreak in Singapore, it was postponed to August 2003.
In the court, after abandoning her initial account, Sundarti told the court on the stand about the extensive and severe maid abuse which Ng had inflicted on her over the month she worked for Ng’s family, and admitted she started the fire and said it was Ng who attacked her first. With regards to the fatal wounds found on Ng’s body however, Sundarti insisted that Ng stabbed herself after she allegedly threatened to hurt Leon should Ng not harm herself, but the autopsy results by Dr Gilbert Lau had proven that the twelve knife wounds were not self-inflicted and they were more probable to be inflicted by the maid.
Sundarti’s claims of abuse were corroborated by Ng’s employees Fiona Ong, Rose Ang, Esther Hong, Margaret Low and Nancy Ee, who testified that there were times where Ng indeed refused to give the maid any food and preventing them from giving any food to Sundarti, and their moves of sympathy to give Sundarti some snacks while Ng was not looking, as well as Ng scolding Sundarti for eating the baby’s food. Even the two previous maids of Ng, Aminah and Jami, also told the court that Ng had indeed physically abused them frequently even when they committed the slightest of mistakes in their work. Despite the above testimonies of Ng’s cruelty towards her maids, Ng’s husband Drake Poh and Ng’s family defended Ng and stated that Ng was not a maid abuser when they took the stand as prosecution witnesses.
In addition, the prosecution sought to portray Sundarti as a cold-blooded killer and an incorrigible liar, as they said she told the police, witnesses and court many different versions of what happened, arguing that these lies only served to corroborate her guilt and she was completely lying about the alleged maid abuse. They also said that the witnesses who arrived at the raging crime scene noted that Sundarti looked calm when they found her with the baby, which meant she did not have any loss of self-control at all. As such, they sought that Sundarti should be found guilty of murder and sentenced to death.
In response, Sundarti’s lawyer Mohamed Muzammil bin Mohamed argued that Sundarti was not to be held liable for murder given that the crime was committed in a moment of loss of self-control and due to sudden and grave provocation caused by Ng’s mistreatment of her maid. Mohamed also said that the killing was due to a sudden fight and his client was exercising her right to self-defence, given that she was physically a small-sized and frail young woman who was slightly larger than Ng and had no undue advantage over the victim, and she would have died or seriously injured had she not used the knife to confront Ng, who continually attacked the maid despite being injured. The fight that ensued by the quarrel and with no premeditation was in favour of Sundarti since Ng was the aggressor and it was not of a cruel and unusual nature.
The trial dragged on for more than a year, and it took 27 days to hear the case before the trial judge, High Court judge M P H Rubin would decide on his final verdict.
Verdict On 24 September 2004, Justice Rubin was ready with his verdict in Sundarti’s case. In a packed courtroom, many people, including the victim’s family, prosecutors and Sundarti, were shocked and surprised as Justice Rubin read out that he decided to convict Sundarti of culpable homicide not amounting to murder after finding her not guilty of murder.