Case 3 - David Case by Feby Indirani

The Case of David Hartanto Widjaja

A tragic story of an Indonesian student in Singapore

Anyone who knows David Hartanto Widjaja, 21, an Electrical Electronic Engineering student of Nanyang Technological University, expected the young man to graduate with excellent academic achievement.

Nobody has ever thought the Indonesian young man awarded with scholarship to study in the Lion City would leave his beloved ones forever with a tragic ending.

David was found dead lying on a ground at the university campus on March 2 2009 at 10am.

According to a statement issued by the university, the student was believed to have stabbed his advisor associate professor Chan Kap Luk, 45, and subsequently fell off the linkway between two blocks.

David had always been the bright student with excellent academic performance. He achieved honorable mention in Asian Pacific Mathematics Olympiad 2005 and participated as a contestant in International Mathematical Olympiad in the same year.

The top student was finishing his final year project and had a discussion with Professor Chan when the tragic incident happened.

The local media reported that David stabbed Professor Chan before slitting his wrist and jumping into his death. But the slitting wrist was later proved to be wrong by an autopsy.

One of the news media which took the line about wrist slitting was Channel News Asia.

The news travelled back Indonesia quickly and some of the news agencies simply report on the case by quoting Singaporean media reports.


Don’t believe everything you read in newspaper and what you see TV screen

But Iwan Piliang, 45, a veteran journalist who has now works as a citizen reporter in Jakarta had doubts about those news reports. He established his own news blog in and makes use of the space in the cyber world to spread out stories what he believes to have been wrongly reported by the mainstream media.

The story that Piliang has devoted most of his effort to work on is the David’s case. His involvement in the case started with an email from a friend in Singapore.

The email contained pictures of the crime scene which included Professor Chan’s room where there was a white board full of hand writing and pictures of cleaners wiping out blood all over a staircase, a book blanketed with blood, a door handle again painted with blood, a glass bridge splattered with blood.

New reports in Singapore stated that David stabbed his professor with a 10cm knife and a bottle and a towel were found in the student’s bag.

Piliang’s friend who sent out the email questioned news reports claiming David’s intention to kill the professor. “Do you think a person who intent to kill and commit suicide will bring those kinds of stuff? It should have been easier to bring big knife if he got intention to kill.”

Out of curiosity, Piliang started conducting research on the case which had already become a hot topic in online chat room and forums.

Indonesian businessman Cristovita Wiloto, who runs a public relation company also closely follows the case and shares the news in his Facebook account.

Rumours and suspicion has arisen over what actually happened that led to the tragic death of David, as many questions are still unanswered.

Injustice over the case

Indonesian lawyer Dr O. C. Kaligis in his book Puzzle of David’s Case in the preface of the book said: “I am writing this book because of my concern towards miscarriages, of justices, that often occurs in the judiciary system.”

“As a litigator with over more than 40 years of experience, never have I seen such a blatant violation of human rights as could be found in David’s case.”

Examples cited by Dr Kaligis:

1, David’s family was not allowed to see David’s body directly

2, David’s family were only allowed to see his body through a glass

3, David’s face was tightly wrapped

4, David’s family were only permitted to such sight for three minutes

5, The police detained David’s laptop, which is a personal longing, and did not return it to the family even after a court decision was made

6,The judge did not examine the DNA and blood pattern that should be considered as evidence

7, The judge rejected the witnesses and expert witnesses requested to be presented in the court without clear legal basis.

8, A witness at the crime scene during the day of the incident was hidden behind the scene by the investigator.

Other queries raised by Piliang include:

1, Why the crime scene was cleaned just few hours after the incident?

2, There were also some calculation that the incident related to David’s final project, since his data research had been blocked by campus soon afterwards.

David’s final project is :Multiview aquisitions from Multi-camera configuration for person adaptive 3D display. Project number: A3026-81. Summary: Multi cameras will be used to obtain multiviews of scene. The requirement to take the subject: Strong Mathematical Skills and C/C++ programing. For the research, David was refer to the EEE3, Information System Research Lab (Loc: S2-B3a-06).

What made the incident more dramatic was that Zhou Zang, assistant of Professor Chan was found dead himself in his room four days after David’s death.

As debate on the case started to heat up in the cyber world, Piliang began investigation of the case and published his first article online on March 8 about the suspicious things surrounding the case that he learned from the media so far.

The veteran journalist met David’s family in a press conference on March 17 and starting from that day Piliang received all first-hand information about the case which he believes the case has not been fairly handled by the Singaporean authorities.

Hartono was accompanied by Soh Che Ing, Senior Investigation Officer, Ivory Polisce Division, HQ, Singapure. He happened to observe three plasters at David’s neck. Hartono asked to agent Soh Che Ing in Mandarin.“Wo ere ce (David) cing sang wei sem mo yu hen tuo Tie pu?” (Why my son’s neck was plastered like this?)

And the police can not give him any clear answer.

Hartono also said that one of the students talked to one lady staff at the campus that she acclaimed to see that David ran and shout out “they want to kill me.”

It is surely hard to prove something like that, but Pilliang got more fire to continue his story.


The mother: David never liked using knife

athed to attack another person and slit his own wrist. On March 21, Piliang visited the family’s house at Tubagus Angke in West Jakarta. He met David’s mother Tjhay Lie Khiun and the brother William Hartono Widjaja.

In his report, Iwan recalled he was given water and sliced apple.

“This is the first time I hold the knife again after David has gone.” David’s mother Tjhay told Iwan. She said David never liked holding a knife all his life ever since he was a little boy and he never peeled fruits.

“If he wanted to have fruit, he just made juice,” the mother said.

It is ironic that her son was being accused of using a tool that he loathed to attack another person and slit his own wrist.

Is it just a suicide case? Is it just another crime case?

According to David’s brother William Hartanto, Open Computer Vision (CV) was one of the applications that David used for his research. It is a software launched by Intel Corporation in 1998 and it is used freely for research purposes at universities.

Piliang, who used to run graphic designe and visual animation business, contacted an expert friends in the field to look into the matter. Back then Iwan had a business

One of the experts is Ary Setijadi, 36, head of (ITB): ITB Digital Media & Game Technology, malting the boundary of art science and engineering Department at Bandung Institute of Technology.

Setijadi stated there were two major research areas that would use the software Open CV which were entertainment and military.

Professor Chan Kap Luk is a senior member of Defense Science and Technology (DSTA), a research center under Ministry of Defense Singapore. The professor got five patent innovations.

On April 3, NTU released more information about David saying that his academic performance was failing and his scholarship had been terminated.

But David’s family said they learnt about the granting of scholarship three weeks before David’s death. They added that David had no reason to be worried because the parents were able to support him even without the scholarship. The late student was already in his final year of studies and it only took a month or two more to finish the final year project as many David’s friend confirmed that his project was around 90 per cent completed.

An autopsy on David’s body was carried out by the Centre for Forensic Medicine, Health Science Authority, and the report revealed that there were 36 points of injuries. Of those 14 caused by sharp things, the rest were internal injuries.