T

he Singaporean Coroners Court ruled Wednesday that David Hartanto Widjaya, an Indonesian who was studying at the city-state's Nanyang Technological University (NTU), committed suicide by jumping from a campus building.

The court said in its verdict that David, 21, committed suicide after allegedly stabbing his professor with a kitchen knife, The Straits Times reported.

Witnesses had said David was seen, covered in blood, leaving the office of NTU professor Chan Kap Luk before throwing himself off the building on March 2.

The coroner's inquiry into the engineering student's death turned up strong evidence that David had been planning to kill himself, a possibility his family has repeatedly dismissed.

The court heard that David searched the Internet for ways to commit suicide and murder before he plunged to his death.

Text taken from the undergraduate's laptop showed he searched Google for "a good way to commit suicide" and the 10 most common suicide methods. He also searched for murder methods, according to Senior Sergeant Joe Ng Suan Teck, who conducted a forensic examination of David's laptop.

Teck told the court the text fragments he had extracted included Internet searches and links to web sites on both suicide and murder.

His examination of the laptop also found what appears to be a suicide note. The unsigned document, titled "Last Words", was created on Jan 25 and left unamended.

In the note, which begins "If this e-mail is sent, that means I am no longer in this world", the writer painted a picture of an unhappy family situation, saying he became "hardened" and stopped crying after he turned 16. "I just don't have any more tears to shed for other people."

The writer said he "found life much more difficult and complicated" after entering university.

David's family, who believe their son was murdered, had complained to Singaporean authorities because their request that his laptop and digital hard disk be returned to them was denied.

The family pledged to "continually seek justice" after the verdict was handed down.

David's father, Hartono, said graphic pictures of his corpse - with defence wounds - suggested that he had not committed suicide.

"I will go on. I will go to the edge of the world to find justice. I will never feel content as long as David's murderer still walks freely out there," Hartanto told The Jakarta Post via telephone from Singapore.

Hartono said he was not surprised with the court's verdict, saying that from the beginning the judges had only accepted testimony from witnesses on the NTU's side and rejected those submitted by the family.

He also expressed his disappointment with the Indonesian government, which had provided no support or legal aid to the family.