} seriously

oh dear this is what im doing instead of my crim law assignment.

so here is the summary of the big mystery within the past week: on 2 March 2009, an Indon student from NTU allegedly stabbed his professor, and proceeded to commit suicide. The news spread like wildfire, mostly through word of mouth. And then on 7 March 2009, a member of staff from NTU was found hanging in the balcony of his apartment on campus.

there has been a lot, and i mean a LOT of speculation surrounding these two deaths. though the media have largely painted both cases to appear as suicides, people started spotting inconsistencies, and doubting whether both were really suicides.

(if you're intrigued, start with NTU's official statements which can be found in the news feed of their website.)

as Sherlock Holmes, the greatest detective of all time, says - we do not theorise. we do not prejudice our judgments we theories. we gather facts, and we use logic, and put forward evidence. so here are the FACTS, what we know:

1. deceased (1), 21-year-old David Hartanto Widjaja from Indonesia, fell to his death from a roof top.
2. his professor, Chan Kap Luk, suffered from stab wound (back) and minor wounds (hands/arms).
3. both were earlier discussing deceased (1)'s final year project in professor's office.
4. deceased (2), 24-year-old Zhou Zheng from China, was found hanging in the balcony of his apartment.
5. his body was taken down before police came to the scene.

facts that may or may not be relevant:

1. deceased (2) started work as a Project Officer in NTU on 2 March 2009, the same day of the first incident.
2. deceased (1) & (2) were from the same school (Electrical & Electronic Engineering) and both worked in the same lab (according to records on the school website).
3. deceased (1) was in his final year of study, and his grades have recently been slipping. his scholarship was terminated some time ago.
4. (however) his family have no expressed difficulty in paying for the remainder of his studies.

Those are the facts, more or less. the stabbing was 'alleged', there is no proof of the incident since there were no witnesses and no CCTV footage. Although the media have been painting David as a depressed loner, there is no concrete evidence of that. if he were still alive, he would be labelled as a psychopath, basically. he would be facing charges of attempted murder. i think there is reasonable doubt to that.

although speculating isn't good when investigating, i think the wave of conspiracy theories going around now is a good thing, in general. what we can do, as the general public, is keep theorising, keep talking about it, spread the news. the last thing we want to do is for the case to be swept aside and leave the only lasting impression of this person as some crazy maniac who stabbed his professor to because he didn't get an A.

here is the thing. A Singaporean might do that. A Chinese might do that. A Korean might do that. that is based on my knowledge of the pressurising environment of the education system in those places. but an Indonesian? i doubt it. i, very reasonably, doubt it.

2009-03-08, 11:50 a.m..
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