In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

9 A Witness for the Defence Anyone charged with murder seldom escaped the death penalty under the Dutch administration of Melaka. It did not hesitate to impose harsh penalties on those charged with murder, regardless of mitigating circumstances that might have forced the culprits to commit murder or manslaughter. But a Malay youngster accused of wilful murder of his nephew escaped the death penalty as a result of a curious twist of evidence against him in the twilight days of the Dutch rule in Melaka. The case involved a respectable Malay family in the hinterlands of Melaka, where the Malays lived in rustic simplicity characteristic of their traditional way of life. The intimate details of the social life of the Malays are seldom reflected in contemporary Malay and European sources. It is therefore exciting to encounter a panorama of village life before modernity came to exercise its disturbing influence on rural Malay society. The case provides plenty of room for a reconstruction of events without following the footsteps of the prosecutor, because just for once, the prosecutor failed to indict the accused man before the court. Death of a youngster Gapam was a remote hamlet in the middle of woodlands in the upper reaches of the River Gapam. There were no more than a dozen families in the hamlet. They lived by farming food crops and gathering jungle products for sale in the nearby towns of Air Molek, Duyong and Melaka, all of which could be reached by boat in a few hours. Small side-streams linked people in this remote hamlet to the River Duyong, which joined the sea some kilometres to the south east of Melaka. The inhabitants of Gapam were mostly Malays, but some itinerant Javanese and Bugis also lived in this remote part of Melaka. The houses in Gapam were built not very far from each other and on the river bank 88 Foul (Murder) 1-33.qxd 2006/5/19 ⁄W⁄¨ 01:05 Page 87 for convenience of communication. This remote periphery of Melaka was administered by a penghulu in Ujong under the Dutch administration of Melaka. In June 1791, the quiet life in Gapam was shattered as never before by the brutal murder of a youngster, Kasan, the son of Panglima Tenbong, who was by far the wealthiest man in the hamlet. The enquiries into Kasan’s death involved practically everyone in the hamlet and revealed a rather unexpected picture of rural life, full of intrigue, passion and conflicts even in such remote areas as yet untouched by modernity. The men of Gapam were constantly going up and down the river to the nearby townships to buy and sell things as well as for some entertainment only to be found in towns. There was consequently nothing surprising about Kasan’s sudden decision to go down the river claiming to visit Duyong or Melaka, to buy rice on the morning of 29 October 1790. Kasan did not intimate to his step-mother, Sapia, how he was going to go to down the river, either by himself or with someone else, and where he was actually going. Sapia approached her Malay neighbours, Dul Aman and his son-in-law, Jumpol, and their friend, Naka, a Bugis, to look for Kasan, when he failed to return home later in the day. Sapia’s neighbours began looking for Kasan sometime in the morning of the next day, and found Kasan lying dead; the man who led the search party, Naka, came to Sapia with the news that her son was found lying dead in the river.1 In a surprising move, the search party led by Naka caught Kasan’s uncle, Samin, who lived with the family, as the malefactor, soon after the discovery of Kasan’s death and produced him before the penghulu in Ujong next day. The brutal murder of a youngster and the arrest of his uncle for murder caused a stir, for nothing like this had ever happened in this quiet village and its inhabitants flocked to where Samin was held to be taken to the penghulu on a murder charge. The inhabitants of Gapam were shocked by the events, but they were also amused by the sudden outburst of distress by Sapia, Kasan’s step-mother, over the arrest of Samin instead of sorrow and anger at Kasan’s death. Two people who were present on the scene recalled that Sapia affectionately weeping embraced Samin saying “why have you bound him and let...

Share