It all happened in a single night. On August 31, 2024, in Tawau, in the Malaysian state of Sabah, a 12-year-old girl returned home after a social gathering and told her mother what had happened to her.
Her father, a 30-year-old Indonesian man and father of six, took a parang, a machete, and went after the man she had pointed out. He caught up with him in a nearby chicken coop and wounded him several times. The victim, a 33-year-old compatriot, died sometime between 19:30 that night and noon the following day.
Police arrested him at his home on September 2. Medical examinations found recent tears in the girl, and the Chemistry Department detected DNA from the deceased man in clippings from her fingernails. According to Mothership.sg and Says.com, that DNA matched the semen found in her underwear.
On October 1, 2026, the Tawau High Court sentenced him to 13 years in prison, counting from the date of his arrest. The initial charge was murder, but it was reduced to culpable homicide not amounting to murder, which carries a sentence of up to 30 years. When he completes his sentence, he will be handed over to Immigration.
What would you have done in his place?