August 12, 2011
Remember the convicted cannibal Sumanto? The Central Java man is hungry for love.
“I've been yearning for a wife,” Sumanto, a patient at Haji Mustajab Mental Institution in Karanganyar, Purbalingga, told news portal Tempointeraktif.com earlier this week.
Sumanto was sentenced to five years in prison in 2003 for stealing and eating a woman's corpse, an act he believed would give him supernatural powers.
He was freed in 2006 after receiving several sentence remissions and has stayed at the private institution since then.
The head of the institution, a local religious leader named Supono Mustajab, was vital in Sumanto's rehabilitation and psychological recovery.
Supono taught Sumanto to practice Islamic beliefs, including fasting during Ramadan.
“Sometimes he also goes to tarawih [the Ramadan evening prayer] at the mosque,” Supono said.
For the past few weeks, Sumanto often expressed worries that no woman would want his hand in marriage.
“The important thing is, my wife has to be a woman and she has to be religious,” Sumanto said. “She doesn't have to be beautiful but if she looks like Dewi Perssik, [Indonesian actress and singer] it couldn't hurt either.”
Sumanto's case grabbed headlines during his trial in 2003 and "Kanibal Sumanto," a film based on his life story, was released the following year.
(x the JG)
vr 12 aug 2011 - 8:11