The Phnom Penh Municipal Court on Wednesday charged a 27-year-old police officer with murdering his girlfriend, whose battered body was found floating in the Tonle Sap river last week.
Police found the body of Song Davin, 20—a first-year accounting student at Phnom Penh’s Vanda Institute—on October 7 near the riverbank in Chroy Changva district. Police said the body was covered in bruises, and concluded that the victim had been tortured.
A subsequent autopsy revealed that Song Davin had also been raped, police said.
Sieng Sok, the deputy prosecutor in charge of the case, confirmed that the suspected killer, Hong Kalidin, was charged with murder Wednesday, and declined to comment further.
Mr. Kalidin was arrested on Tuesday at his home in Chamkar Mon district. Inside his new Toyota Tundra, police found a Glock pistol, two silencers, a small bag of methamphetamine and a homemade pipe for smoking the drug, Lieutenant General Mok Chito, director of the Interior Ministry’s central judicial department, said Wednesday.
“When we arrested and questioned him, he was acting like a drug addict,” Lt. Gen. Chito said, adding that Mr. Kalidin was made a municipal police officer earlier this year, but had yet to be assigned to a specific department.
“After questioning…he said he bought the gun to use because he would soon become a police officer,” Lt. Gen. Chito said. “Now that he has committed a crime, he has been disqualified.”
The victim’s father, Teng Song, 61, said he would request compensation from Mr. Kalidin.
“The money cannot heal our trauma, but we need to pay for a funeral,” he said.
