Ascetic dies from a fall

Ascetic dies from a fall

JAKARTA (JP): A man who climbed a 15-meter tall banyan tree in a West Java cemetery to find solitude and obtain magical power fell off and died on Tuesday.

Eyewitnesses said Toha, 27, fell out of the tree about two hours after he climbed the tree in the sacred place in Cirebon where Sunan Gunung Jati, one of Indonesia's early Moslem propagators, was buried.

"As soon as he had climbed high enough, he perched there, motionless. He seemed to be meditating on a branch until we heard him come crashing down," an eyewitness told Antara.

The cemetery premises were crowded with hundreds of people, many of them from the Cirebon royal family, attending the traditional Grebeg Syawal ceremony, when the incident happened.

His relatives said that Toha, who had not eaten and drunk anything since leaving his home in neighboring Indramayu on Feb. 21, was taking his last "test" before acquiring the supernatural power he was after. (pan)