When a doctor's honest help paid back with a cruel attack
When a doctor's honest help paid back with a cruel attack
By Yogita Tahil Ramani
JAKARTA (JP): It was dusk on Nov. 27 and Andi Santosa, a 47-
year-old general practitioner, was at his rented practice on Jl.
Dewi Sartika, East Jakarta.
He was alone. The last patient had left a few minutes earlier
and no one was in the waiting room.
At about 6 p.m. Andi, who was still in his white coat, heard a
knock on the door.
"It was a handsome man in his mid-20s," he recalled.
According to Andi, the visitor implored the doctor for
assistance to help a dying relative at a nearby house.
"He told me that his relative living in a nearby house could
not get out of bed," Andi told The Jakarta Post on Saturday.
Knowing that more patients might show up at any time, he
politely told the stranger, whose eyes were etched with
desperation: "Even though I have no patients, I cannot leave my
practice."
The man left and Andi returned to his work.
Like many other businesses, only a few people had visited his
practice recently in the wake of the prolonged economic turmoil.
About one and half hours later, the same man appeared again
and made the same plea.
Andi looked at the visitor earnestly.
The resolve of the 1979 graduate of Atma Jaya University's
school of medicine started to ebb.
His 16 years of experience as a general practitioner suddenly
came across his mind, when he had often walked or ridden his
bicycle along dirty, spooky alleys at all hours to help the poor.
Earnest eyes
Even though he was aware, from the media, about the escalating
number of street crimes in the capital in the last few weeks he
decided not to take the alarming news seriously.
"I am a doctor. I saw in front of me a man who seemed decent
and sincere," Andi said, adding that the man was clean-shaven
with short hair and earnest eyes.
The visitor, he said, wore a short-sleeved shirt and a light
khaki-colored vest.
"He was quite handsome with wheat-colored skin. Judging from
his accent, it seemed that he was from East Java," the doctor
continued.
Andi listened to his pleas for another few minutes before
finally buying the story.
He grabbed his satchel, locked his practice and invited the
"good man" to get into the passenger seat of his black Suzuki
Escudo van.
During the trip, the generous doctor asked more details about
the passenger's ailing relative, who the man said was "really
sick and too weak to speak".
"We had not even gone one kilometer when he told me to turn
left into a small alley near the intersection of Jl. Dewi Sartika
and Jl. MT Haryono," Andi said.
The alley, he recalled, was lined with small kiosks. It ended
in an open, deserted field. Scores of houses could be seen about
15 meters from the field.
"I parked my car on the field. The man then pointed to the
back door of one of the houses which had an iron fence and neon
lights around it.
"On reaching the door, he told me that it was locked. And
then... another man screamed 'Ya!' (Yes!)" Andi said.
Before Andi could react, hands appeared from everywhere and he
was pinned to the ground. Each of his arms was held by a pair of
hands and another hand grabbed his throat.
Andi felt his life being literally choked out of his body. He
could neither breathe nor speak.
He heard the rustle of plastic rope and knew that the crooks
were about to tie his legs. He struggled with all his might.
"They failed to tie my legs after trying four times.
"God, I knew I was going to die right there. I knew that if
they succeeded in tying my legs, they could easily throw me into
a river," Andi said.
"I just kept thinking that my family would not be able to find
my body should the gang dump me into a river," the father of two
children said.
From the corner of his right eye, Andi saw a man taking out a
sickle. Instinctively, he used his right hand -- which was free
at that moment -- to grasp the weapon.
His hand was bleeding but he felt no pain. He could not even
breathe but he did not care.
He said he was so angry at what was happening to him.
After succeeding in freeing his left arm, he was able to
remove the hands from his throat.
"I took two quick breaths and then the hands were back on my
throat," he said.
The crooks, Andi said, carried out the crime carefully,
quickly and silently.
But for Andi the seven-minute episode lasted far too long.
"They did not say a single word until I heard them whispering
to each other to get the ignition key of my car from my pocket,"
he said.
"I freed my neck and shouted to them to take the key from me
if that all they wanted," Andi recalled.
The gang replied to his shout with an instant blow to his left
temple, leaving his left eye almost barely able to open.
"I heard someone turning on my car's engine. I was still
pinned to the ground. They then sprinted and ran to the car and
fled with it, leaving me alone at the site," Andi said.
But God was merciful, Andi said.
A man suddenly came out from the house, supposedly the home of
the crook's ailing relative, and asked me about had happened, he
said.
"He got me up and both of us, together with residents living
in the kiosks along the alley, tried to run after my car but to
no avail," Andi said.
With a bleeding hand and a lump as big as a Ping-Pong ball on
his forehead, Andi was escorted by a local on a motorcycle to
report the case to the nearby police station on Jl. Otista.
Andi was then treated at St. Carolus Hospital in Central
Jakarta where he has been training medical students for the past
seven years.
"I received two stitches on a right finger and treatment for
my head," Andi said.
The nightmare, he said, had disturbed his sleep ever since.
He now ends his practice one and a half hours earlier than the
previous 8:30 p.m. closing time. His van is still missing.
"Society is really sick and there's no good, no good at all in
helping people here," Andi ended his tale by saying.