Businessman found dead in hospital grounds
Businessman found dead in hospital grounds
JAKARTA (JP): The corpse of Tjandra Tjandra, a 58-year-old businessman, was found with three stabs to the neck and stomach in the compound of the Husada hospital in Central Jakarta yesterday morning.
Two knives were still stuck in him while another was found not far off. Tjandra lived in nearby Tangki subdistrict, Taman Sari, West Jakarta.
The staff of the hospital on Jl. Mangga Besar Raya told The Jakarta Post that the corpse, wearing only trousers, was found by visitors and on-duty nurses at around 6:30 a.m.
The body was found on the grass under a tree beside the surgery room, more than 200 meters away from the front door of the main building.
There were no signs of any struggle, but police found bloodstains on a wall, and on the ground.
From his pocket, police found a signed suicide note, saying he wanted to kill himself after having failed to handle the labor dispute at his factory, PT BTMHH, in Bekasi, 35 kilometers east of here.
Treatened
The signature resembles the one found on his identity card.
Tjandra's firm in Bekasi as mentioned in the letter could not be reached for confirmation.
In his note, apparently written in poor Bahasa Indonesia, Tjandra said that he was always being threatened by workers at the factory. He said that the workers even disrespected the government officials trying to help settle the dispute in the company.
The letter did not give details on the nature of the dispute.
If Tjandra was in fact killed, there must have been at least one perpetrator. They would have been spotted by the hospital's staff or guards, said a police detective.
"We have collected information from those on duty last night and none of them had heard any scream," Tanita Meliani, an official of the hospital, told the Post.
Police, however, refused to come to such a conclusion so quickly.
"We're still investigating the case, trying to collect more evidence whether he had committed suicide or been murdered," Central Jakarta Police Chief Lt. Col. Murawi Effendy told reporters.
A police dog sniffed out a route from the scene of the crime to the front door and the back of the hospital.
According to Meliani, relatives of the victim told the hospital staff that Tjandra had left his house at around 4 a.m. yesterday.
However, his relatives refused to comment when met by reporters at the coroner unit of the Cipto Mangunkusumo general hospital. (bsr)