Thieves population continued to increase. Theft cases everyday. Prison overcrowded with habitual thieves. Is anyone keeping track?
Brunei has no shortage of thieves. From shoplifters to cat burglars to cable thieves, you name it. Even fruits and livestock are not spared, they too got snatched by thieves. From way back when, thefts have been the number one crime in the country, and as years and decades went by, the activity is showing no sign of slowing down. Making it worse is over the years, some local thieves had taken up a fancy to knives and machetes and graduated to become daring robbers and murderers. Mugging began to emerge. In 2020, a man, in broad daylight, threatened the cashier of a convenient store using a knife asking for the victim to hand over proceeds of the shop. The daring armed robbery on a goldsmith at Kg Tanjung Bunut also in 2020 is another wtf development. Unlike in the more advanced countries, where fingerprints would lead to arrests and CCTV footages are meticulously analysed, we can’t expect much from our local police force where the arrests were either thanks to lucky breaks or dumb criminals. Until such time when our country is able to keep pace in the crime busting department, we just have to live with this reality.
My family has experienced first hand that CCTV footage did not result in conviction. So don’t think that having CCTVs would help deter criminals, let alone getting a slam dunk case. Not in Brunei. An alarm system, on the other hand, would do an excellent deterrent job. Thieves would definitely scram once the alarm got set off. Granted that fixing an alarm system could be expensive and not yet mainstream in Brunei, the best approach for now is to deny the thieves any opportunity to break into your homes or premises. Thieves love naked doors and windows, so fix metal bars everywhere, that would do it. Never take the danger of housebreakers lightly. Gone are the days when thieves tip toed their way in and out people’s homes quietly, mindful not to alert the sleeping homeowners. Once they successfully broken into your house, thieves, who in most if not all of the time, have some kind of weapons with them, will have no issue manhandling the homeowners. There have been a number of times where housebreaking victims got tied up and threatened with weapons. For the two unfortunate cases below, the homeowners weren’t so lucky.
On 21 June 1999, two men, broke into a house in Kiarong. The house was occupied by a doctor from India, his wife and their two children. The doctor’s wife was awaken when one of the thieves opened the door to their bedroom on the first floor of the house. She got up to switch on the light and was shocked to see a man standing just 2 feet away from her. Instead of getting the hell out of there, the thief was unhinged and instead walked towards her. The wife screamed waking her husband who impulsively jumped off his bed and went after the man who had ran down the stairs. The man managed to get away but not before stabbing the doctor with a knife. The doctor staggered a few steps up the stairs then collapsed. He was rushed to the hospital and was pronounced dead 15 minutes after arrival at RIPAS. Two men were later held as suspects in the crime, 26-year-old Mohammad Dahrie bin Jaraee and 31-year-old Saufi bin Mohd Arif. Unsurprisingly, both were habitual thieves who have been in and out of jail before. The case dragged on for years, partly because the doctor’s heartbroken widow, the witness of the crime, had packed up and returned to India 3 days after the incident. In 2001, she was flown to Brunei to testify in court where she identified one of the suspects as the one who she saw in their bedroom that fateful night. Despite the prosecutor’s fierce objection, the two suspects, who pleaded not guilty to the charge, were granted bail and the case was adjourned to January the following year. Nothing has been publicised on the case after that (at least not in my knowledge). By way that the suspects pleaded not guilty and the sole witness being thousands of miles away in India (perhaps too traumatised to step foot in Brunei again), I am not surprised if the two suspects eventually walked, or just got mere 4 years jail term, the “sacred” number of years for culpable homicide.
On 18 April 2000, at about 3am, a thief broke into a house in Kg Jerudong. The 31-year-old son of the house owner detected the thief’s presence and gave chase. He managed to grab the thief who put up a fight. The scuffle woke up a number of the family members. They rushed to the living room where the noise came from and witnessed in horror as the thief struck the victim’s head with a hammer. As the victim fell to the floor, the thief fled through the back door where he had broken in from. With a nasty gaping wound on his head, the victim managed to remain conscious, even asking if everyone, especially his mom was okay. He remained conscious in the ambulance but fell into a coma upon arrival at RIPAS. Sadly, he never regain consciousness and passed away 9 days later. The victim’s sister had a good look at the thief and was able to give a description to the police. The police had their work cut out for them when, lo and behold, a man with the same description was seen at the ICU in RIPAS and outside the operating theatre where the victim was undergoing surgery. Perhaps the thief felt guilty and was quietly hoping that the victim was okay. Regardless whether he had no intention to kill, he must be kidding to think that someone would come out okay after being hit on the head by a hammer. It turned out that the thief, 28-year-old Musa bin Panjang was no stranger to the police. On top of being ex police officer (no kidding!), he also had been in and out of jail before, for you guess it..theft. Now he had graduated to become a murderer. Musa was sentenced to 15 years’ imprisonment and 10 strokes of the rattan. My guess is he did not serve the full 15 years and was released early for good behaviour, reoffended and continued on getting in and out of jail.
Apart from these two murders, there have also been a number of cases involving people who lived alone who were found dead with stab wounds on their bodies and items missing from their homes, suspected of being murdered in the hands of thieves as well. In these cases, what went down that led to their murders remained a mystery with the perpetrators never discovered.
Kampung Setia – Following the 1963 formation of the Federation of Malaysia and Malaysia’s refusal to return Limbang to Brunei, in September 1964, about 1,000 people from Kampung Ranggau in Limbang who had relatives in and identified themselves as part of Brunei had migrated to Brunei and settled at Kampong Ayer in a village later named as Kg Setia (Loyal Village), as a commemoration to their loyalty to the Sultan of Brunei.
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