Student dies while getting breasts enlarged

Hilda Pasman, a 20-year-old student of a university in the Netherlands, died on Saturday at a beauty parlor on Jl. Kedoya Raya, Kebon Jeruk, West Jakarta, while trying to enlarge her breasts.

"We have detained the beauty parlor owner as a suspect. She will be charged under Article 359 of the Criminal Code on negligent homicide," Kebon Jeruk Police chief Comr. Ahmad Alwi said on Sunday.

The article carries a maximum sentence of five years in jail.

The police have yet to receive the autopsy report on Hilda from the Cipto Mangunkusumo General Hospital.

"We haven't been able to confirm the cause of her death, whether it was caused by the enlargement process or by something else," Ahmad said.

Hilda, a resident of Kemayoran, Central Jakarta, who was on a two-week holiday, visited the beauty parlor on Saturday to have her breasts enlarged by collagen injection.

As the parlor owner, Ho Tjun Tju alias Cucu, 34, was injecting Hilda's left breast, the victim was seized by a cramp.

Cucu immediately called the woman's mother and her housemaid to help carry Hilda to the hospital by taxi. But she died on the way there.

According to the suspect, Hilda had complained of not feeling well but insisted on going ahead with the procedure. Her statement was confirmed by Hilda's boyfriend, Muhammad Ikhsan, a Trisakti University student.

"Hilda was an old customer of mine. She had been coming to my parlor regularly for two years, sometimes to get her hair done, or for skin whitening or facials," Cucu said. -- JP