Man denies murdering Indonesian woman found wrapped in sheet on Hong Kong street
The man was arrested in 2015 after his girlfriend, former domestic helper Wiji Astutik Supardi, was found by a passer-by in Mong Kok
A Pakistani man on Thursday denied murdering his Indonesian girlfriend and dumping her body outside his building at a crowded shopping district in Hong Kong three years ago.
The High Court heard the body of Wiji Astutik Supardi, a torture claimant who previously worked as a domestic helper, lay abandoned under a white mattress cover for some time on Changsha Street, Mong Kok, before it was discovered there on June 8, 2015.
“No one took notice because it’s not uncommon for mattresses to be left on the street,” prosecutor Richard Donald told the jury, opening his case. “But one witness went to investigate … and a hand fell out of the cover.”
The witness in question had been on his way to work that morning when he found the wrapped body blocking the roller door to his shop.
A paramedic certified Wiji dead at the scene.
Police officer Yan Ho-wai said Wiji’s body was bloated by then, with maggots over her face.
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An autopsy showed she had broken ribs as well as cuts and bruises all over her body, some of them indicating force had been used and that she may have been fending off an attack from someone with “a sharp weapon”, Donald said. Traces of the drug methamphetamine were also found in her body. Experts concluded Wiji died of multiple injuries.
Further investigation suggested Wiji might have been attacked at about 2am on June 7, when her neighbour Chan Chi-pang heard a woman scream, as he described it, “very loudly as if she was in agony”.
Her boyfriend Fyaz Wahaj, with whom she had been living at Changsha Street, was arrested on June 10, while he was taking drugs with his friend Shahbaz Khan at a women’s toilet in Tuen Mun.
Wahaj, 31, said upon arrest: “On Saturday [June 6] I had an argument with my wife. I slapped on her face and kicked her on the ground. We both had drugs.”
In his rucksack was a T-shirt and a pair of jeans that had brown flakes from the foam mattress which the cover had been removed from, Donald said.
Khan, granted immunity from prosecution over drug charges, told police Wahaj had admitted the killing to him and asked him to go to Tuen Mun so Wahaj could flee to mainland China.
Wahaj pleaded not guilty before Madam Justice Esther Toh Lye-ping to charges of murder and preventing the lawful burial of a body.
The trial continues.
