Woman ‘forced’ by father’s murder allegation to explain sister’s ‘suicide’ in Qatar

BANGKOK: A woman has said she had no choice but to reveal her younger sister’s suicide after her father alleged in the media that she had been strangled to death in Qatar.

Pramrudee Tiede said she had been forced to explain that her sister, Premruthai Juseng, 26, who had worked as a flight attendant in Qatar and had a history of depression, took her own life by hanging herself in an airline’s dormitory late December. Pramrudee, whose nickname is “Nice”, earlier had told a reporter in a telephone interview that she wanted to keep the affair private, mainly to protect her mother’s feelings.

However, her father, Hiabbu Koh, 74, told the media that he believed Premruthai, whose nickname was “Ice”, had been murdered in her room in Qatar and called on the Thai Foreign Ministry to help investigate the cause of her death.

He said his daughter looked happy when she talked to him in Line message chats. “We talked to each other everyday. She was very happy after she became a flight attendant, the job she had dreamed about for a long time.”

Pramrudee wrote on Facebook that initially she had not wanted to say anything about her sister, who was resting in peace, but she decided to go public to protect her, her mother and the Thai Embassy in Doha.

“My father’s interview with the press was groundless. Ice was not murdered, but she had suffered from depression, resulting in her deciding to take her own life.”

Pramruedee, who is based in Berlin, said she had been alerted about the tragedy by the Thai Embassy in Doha and then she had told her mother, who was in Bangkok.

Hiabbu had been separated from her mother for years. She and her mother then travelled to Doha, she said, where Thai diplomats and the airline’s staff brought them to see her sister’s body.

Police also gave them a letter written by Premruthai, she said, the details of which she would not reveal. However, a source said Premruthai had written down private information concerning her bank accounts.

“Before the day she died, she wrote to me via Whatsapp, saying “I love you sister Nice.

Tell mom also.” Doha police concluded the cause of the death was asphyxiation by hanging.

The two women spent seven days in Doha arranging for Premruthai’s body to be transported to Thailand and during their stay the Thai Embassy and the airline firm took good care of them and helped facilitate the process despite language barriers, Pramrudee said.

“The airline also provided support for our expenses during our stay and procedures to bring her home,” Pramrudee wrote.

She also wrote that she wanted to apologise to everybody that may have been caused trouble because of her father’s allegations.

Meanwhile, Hiabbu yesterday met Foreign Ministry Consular Affairs director-general Chatree Atjananun and his deputy Pattarat Hongthong to seek information about the death of his daughter.

After a two-hour meeting, the father said he still did not believe that his daughter had committed suicide and had submitted a petition for the department to prove the real cause of death.

“My eldest daughter [Premrudee] can write whatever she wants, that’s her right. I have not yet seen the suicide note she mentioned, but what the officials told me was that it was about the location of her belongings and assets,” he said.

The death certificate mentioned only that she had died from asphyxiation and did not contain details about her having been hanged, Hiabbu said. Premruthai was dead so it was not right to blame depression, he added.

Chatree had promised to make more inquires about the cause of death, Hiabbu said, adding that he wanted Qatari authorities to be direct in handling the case.

However, he said he was worried that if the investigation concluded that Premruthai had killed herself, he would be unable to come to terms with the conclusion. - The Nation/Asia News Network