Following the money on lucrative illegal Indo-M’sia maid trade

Editor’s Note: On July 1, 2019, Albert Tei was granted a discharge not amounting to an acquittal (DNAA) by the Semenyih Sessions Court.

SPECIAL REPORT Ten months after she ran away from home, Yufrinda Selan eventually returned a day before her 19th birthday. But it wasn't tears of joy that greeted her.

Yufrinda's family howled as her body, wrapped in a shroud, arrived in a white coffin at their hometown in Batu Putih, East Nusa Tenggara, Indonesia.

Her father, Mentusalak Selan, did not dare to open the wooden box as it bore another name - Melinda Sapay.

"I was scared of making a mistake," Mentusalak said when met earlier this month.

It was only after a provincial officer from Indonesia's Migrant Workers Placement and Protection Body showed Yufrinda's photo that Metusalak was willing to open the coffin. His daughter was inside.

Yufrinda was born on July 15, 1997. On her birthday last year, local police lifted the lid on her coffin, which was kept at a hospital mortuary...