Nurhidayati Wartono Surata

Nurhidayati, who was born in 1984 and was five years older than Ahmed, hailed from the Indramayu regency of West Java, where she lived with her mother Warsem and stepfather Muradi.

Nurhidayati was married with one son before she divorced her husband, seven years after they married in an unknown year.

Ahmed Salim (1 January 1989 – 28 February 2024) was a Bangladeshi painter who was charged with killing his Indonesian girlfriend Nurhidayati Wartono Surata on the evening of 30 December 2018 at a hotel in Geylang in Singapore.

According to Ahmed, Nurhidayati met with Ahmed and expressed her intention to break up with him due to his arranged marriage and her finding a new boyfriend.

Ahmed planned to kill Nurhidayati during that meeting itself if she rejected his request to break up with her new boyfriend.

Although Ahmed's defence counsel submitted medical evidence to prove that Ahmed's mental state was impaired as a result of adjustment disorder during the killing, the High Court determined that Ahmed had a clear intention to commit premeditated murder and never suffered from an abnormality of the mind when killing Nurhidayati.

Ahmed Salim was born in Bangladesh on 1 January 1989.

He was likely the only child and son of his family.

After reaching adulthood and completing his education, Ahmed migrated from Bangladesh to Singapore in 2010 to seek and gain employment.

In May 2012, while working in Singapore, Ahmed Salim first met his girlfriend Nurhidayati Wartono Surata, an Indonesian citizen who had come to Singapore that same year to work as a maid.

In November 2017, five years after they first met, the couple agreed to get married in December 2018.

Ahmed was devoted to Nurhidayati, and regarded her as his wife despite not being officially married.

He was working as a painter as of December 2018.

As of December 2018, Nurhidayati was working for a family that resided in Serangoon, which was the third family she had worked for since her arrival in Singapore in 2012.

Since they first met, Ahmed and Nurhidayati became romantically involved, and Nurhidayati's family were aware of Ahmed's relationship with Nurhidayati.

In May or June 2018, the sixth year of her relationship with Ahmed, Nurhidayati first met Shamim Shamizur Rahman, a Bangladeshi who worked as a plumber in Singapore, and became attracted to him.

Upon getting wind of Nurhidayati's relationship with Shamim, Ahmed confronted her and subsequently, he contacted his mother and a friend to help him find a wife.

Eventually, sometime in July or August 2018, Ahmed and Nurhidayati reconciled and resumed their relationship in spite of Nurhidayati being reminded of Ahmed's arranged marriage.

However, while they resumed their routine meetings on Sundays and constantly had sex, the couple's relationship became fraught with arguments regarding Nurhidayati's continued meetings with Shamim, and at one point, during one of these quarrels, Ahmed was so enraged that he used a towel to cover Nurhidayati's mouth, before he released Nurhidayati after she struggled; Nurhidayati later apologized to Ahmed over this.

Three months later, in October or November 2018, Nurhidayati met Hanifa Mohammad Abu, a Bangladeshi and work permit holder who worked as a fitter in Singapore.

Not long after, Nurhidayati fell in love with Hanifa and became his girlfriend.

Shortly after they had begun dating, Nurhidayati told Hanifa about Ahmed and informed him about Ahmed's arranged marriage in Bangladesh.

She assured Hanifa that she would end her relationship with Ahmed; Hanifa and Nurhidayati continued dating despite all this.

On 9 December 2018, Ahmed suspected that Nurhidayati was once again seeing another man.

Nurhidayati did not deny it and admitted she had become Hanifa's girlfriend, and asked Ahmed to go back to Bangladesh to marry his fiancée.

Although Ahmed asked Nurhidayati to meet him again on 23 December with the view of persuading her not to break up, Nurhidayati once again expressed that she wished to end her relationship with Ahmed in view of his upcoming marriage.

Ahmed Salim, then 29 years old, despaired over his relationship issues with Nurhidayati, especially after she decided to break up with him.

Therefore, Ahmed formulated a plan to once again persuade Nurhidayati not to break up with him, and should that fail, he would kill her.

The plan itself was concocted prior to meeting Nurhidayati on 23 December 2018, but Ahmed did not do it since Nurhidayati agreed to meet him on 30 December 2018.

On the day of 30 December itself, Ahmed emptied his bank account and retrieved his savings of SGD$1,150, and he also bought a rope for the purpose of strangling Nurhidayati since he was aware that Singapore law did not allow people to carry weapons in the public.

On the late evening of 30 December 2018, Ahmed met up with Nurhidayati at the Golden Dragon Hotel in Geylang, which was Singapore's red-light district.

Inside the room Ahmed booked, the couple had sex and they once again moved to the topic of their relationship.

Ahmed once again pleaded with Nurhidayati to break up with Hanifa and hoped to reconcile their relationship.

However, Nurhidayati was firm with her stance to end their six-year relationship, and refused to bow down to Ahmed's threat of killing her upon her refusal to reconcile.

Therefore, Ahmed executed his plot to kill Nurhidayati, first using a towel to strangle Nurhidayati on the neck before he stopped and used the rope he brought along to loop around Nurhidayati's neck a few times and tied a knot, tightening the rope and strangling Nurhidayati for several minutes.

As a result of the brutal strangulation, 34-year-old Nurhidayati Wartono Surata died.

Eventually, Ahmed's mother found a potential wife for him, and the marriage was arranged to take place in February 2019.

Hence, Ahmed was found guilty of murdering Nurhidayati under Section 300(a) of the Penal Code, and sentenced to death on 14 December 2020.

As of 2024, Ahmed Salim was the most recent person to be sentenced to death for murder by the courts of Singapore.

Ahmed was hanged on 28 February 2024, after his appeal to the Court of Appeal and clemency plea to the President of Singapore were both dismissed.