The driver then took the satay home with him and ate it with his wife and 10-year-old son, Naba, who both became ill after dipping the meat in the accompanying peanut sauce that was laced with rat poison.
Bandiman told police that he did not eat the sauce, and that his wife and son both started vomiting soon after eating the meat skewers, with little Naba foaming at the mouth and convulsing. The pair were rushed to hospital, where Bandiman’s wife eventually recovered – but doctors were unable to save Naba.
NA was arrested on April 30 after CCTV footage recovered from outside the mosque captured her interaction with Bandiman. She has been charged with premeditated murder under Article 340 of Indonesia’s Criminal Code, punishments for which can range from 20 years’ imprisonment to death by firing squad.
SIMILAR CASES
Strangely, NA’s arrest has drawn parallels to the Hoorn Pie case of 1911, when Indonesia was still under Dutch colonial rule.
That case – which involved a box of poisoned pastries similarly sent to the wrong person in Hoorn, the Netherlands, who subsequently died – is now used by Indonesian law faculties to teach the concept of criminal intent.
But while it demonstrates the principle of dolus eventualis, or an awareness of the likely outcome of an action, Indonesian lawmakers argue that the case of the spiked satay presents a number of other legal hurdles and that prosecutors may have trouble convicting NA of premeditated murder.
“Because the victim in this case [the driver’s son] was mistargeted, the use of Article 340 regarding premeditated murder could be negated, because the crime of premeditated murder was not achieved,” Ermelina Singereta, a lawyer at the Dike Nomia law firm in Jakarta, told This Week In Asia.
“But there is another alternative article that can be used, namely Article 338 of the Criminal Code which is unpremeditated murder and carries a maximum penalty of 15 years in prison, because the perpetrator did not have the ‘intention and plan’ to commit the murder of the victim, so the murder was unplanned in advance.”
Speaking to the media following NA’s arrest on May 3, the head of the Yogyakarta Police Crime Investigation Division, Burkan Rudy Satria, said “the suspect planned the crime for three months. She bought the poison for 225,000 rupiah (US$16) online”.
The poison – which Burkan confirmed was cyanide meant to be used to kill rats – has sparked comparisons to the Wongso case, which also involved a cyanide-laced drink, but Irna Minauli, a criminal and forensic psychologist based in Medan, said this similarity was not entirely surprising.
“Aggression in women is no different from that of men, it is just that the motives and ways of committing murder are different,” she said. “Men tend to commit murders directly while women commit them indirectly, for example by using someone else as an intermediary. The tools used are also different. Men often use sharp weapons or guns, but women use more indirect methods that don’t kill immediately such as poison.”
Minauli added that women tend to kill in ways that reduce the chances of injury or disability to the victim, and that motives for murder can differ for men and women.
“With men, we often see murders as a result of perceived self-esteem issues, and in women we see more cases based on jealousy or revenge,” she said.
Revenge was also thought to be the motive in the Wongso murder case, though her lawyers disputed this theory in court and she has always maintained her innocence despite losing all her legal appeals.
Regarding NA and the poisoned satay case, Burkan the police investigator told the media that “the motive was that she had a broken heart”. “The perpetrator and Tomy had been in a relationship before he got married [to another woman],” he said.
Studies have shown that women are far less likely to kill than men, with figures compiled by the Home Office in Britain showing that 90 per cent of murders over a 10-year period to 2012 were committed by men. A report from the US Federal Bureau of Investigation also found that 90 per cent of murders were committed by men from 1999 to 2012.
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Lawyer Singereta, however, cautioned against looking at the case in absolute legal terms, arguing that it also needs to be examined through the prism of gender equality and the treatment of women.
“When a criminal event like this occurs we also need to look at the background of the legal incident. In this case, the alleged perpetrator is a woman who was also the victim of patriarchal attitudes in Indonesia, the absence of gender equality, the abuse of power relations and the existence of a society’s view that men are always right,” she said.
“In the context of this case, we have a woman who is also a victim, because she had a relationship with a man who left her without giving a reason. The victim’s actions were an act of revenge for the hurt that the victim experienced, because the possible promises made to the victim were not fulfilled.”
This article appeared in the South China Morning Post print edition as: Poisoned satay case helps stir debate over why women kill
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