Incarcerated in Siam: ‘I cut her into 9 pieces to hide the murder’

Pakistani claims he killed a 27-year-old woman because she committed blasphemy.

BANGKOK:

“I killed her and cut her body into nine pieces to conceal the murder,” 37-year-old Pakistani prisoner Muhammad Arif, who is being held in Klong Prem Jail, calmly told The Express Tribune.

Arif, who came to Thailand from Sukkur in 2006, claims he killed the woman because she had committed blasphemy. “We became friends on the internet,” he said while talking about the 27-year-old Ditney, who he said lived outside Bangkok. “A month after I first spoke to her, she said she wanted to go to Pattaya via Bangkok.

She asked me to arrange for her accommodation for a night,” he added.

According to Arif, when Ditney came to Bangkok, he  picked her from the airport and took her to a hotel. “While there, she asked me to lend her 25,000 Baht (Rs70,000) and accompany her to Pattaya. When I refused, she first started abusing me and then abused my religion,” he said.

Arif said he put a pillow over her face to “keep her silent” but when he removed it, she started abusing religion even more. “I then found a rope and tied it around her neck with the intention of just scaring her and to teach her a lesson,” he said.

“When I loosened the noose, she started misbehaving again and even uttered blasphemy. I cannot even repeat the words she used, so I decided to kill her,” Arif confessed.

He said that after killing the woman, he cut her into nine pieces so that it was easier to dump the body, adding that he packed her the remains into two black polythene bags and on May 8 2006, threw one bag in a stormy canal and, because he was so bewildered, just left the other on the footpath.

After the bag was opened, the news of the murder spread like wild fire, he said. Arif was arrested on May 9 while he was roaming around the hotel in a daze. He said that he confessed to the police that he committed the murder but could not use repeat the blasphemous words Ditney had used, even in court.

The Pakistani community in Bangkok however has a different story to tell. According to some, Arif befriended Ditney by posting someone else’s picture on the internet. They said that when he received her at the airport, Ditney asked where the person was who used to chat with her online.  Arif told her that person is waiting for her at the hotel.

They say that he then raped her and later killed her when she threatened to contact the police. He was sentenced to life imprisonment but life in prison is tougher for him compared to others.

“My parents disassociated themselves from me when they heard about the murder. Thai inmates beat me up so severely in one jail that I had to be moved to another. I have written several letters to the Pakistani Embassy but it hasn’t responded positively to any of them. I have tried changing my cell multiple times but all my efforts have failed,” he said.

Prior to the incident, Arif was reasonably well settled. He had done his MBA from Manchester University and came to Thailand to work in a private shipping company on a good post. As part of his job, Arif directly supervised around 100 employees.

Now all he wants is to go back home. “I have spent five years in prison here, a year more than is required for a prisoner to move to Pakistan according to an agreement signed between the two governments,” he said, demanding that he be transferred to Pakistan.

Embassy official Malik Iqbal however said that the embassy has forwarded his request to the Thai committee but was refused because Arif has to pay a fine of two million Baht (Rs5.6 million) to Ditney’s family. Iqbal said that as per the agreement, in cases of murder if a fine is not paid and unless the aggrieved family give their consent, such a request is not entertained.

Ninety-five Pakistani inmates are being held in 11 Thai jails. A majority of these prisoners applaud the Pakistan embassy’s role in assisting them and curse Arif for their increased miseries as they say Thai prisoners hate them because of what Arif did to Ditney.

Published in The Express Tribune, July 11^th, 2011.