Adelina’s aunty Petronela Koa was seen weeping aloud when she approached her coffin which had been flown from Malaysia by the Indonesian foreign ministry, the Kompas newspaper reported.
The body was then transported by road to Adelina’s village in the district of Oenino in the East Nusa Tenggara province, together with the family members.
The family’s spokesperson Ambrosius Ku said Adelina’s parents were waiting at the funeral centre in their hometown to receive the 21-year old’s remains for the last rites.
“All of us in the family are very saddened because Adelina has to return home like this,” she said.
Ambrosius said the family hoped that the Malaysian authorities would impose heavy punishment on those who had made Adelina to suffer, leading to her death.
She also urged the Indonesian police to arrest the human traffickers who had taken Adelina away from her village to be illegally employed as a maid in Malaysia.
On Friday, Indonesian police arrested two employment recruiters – an unidentified married couple – in East Nusa Tenggara for allegedly using forged documents to send Adelina to Malaysia in 2015. The police were also pursuing another suspect in the case.
Adelina was reportedly only 17 years old when she was sent abroad. It was reported that the forged documents indicated that Adelina was six years older that her actual age.
Her mother, Yohana Banunaek, had said that a man she did not identify had come to their remote village about seven hours’ drive from Kupang offering her daughter a job in Malaysia, but they refused.
“The man came again with all this fake paperwork and the next day we could not find Adelina. We believe she had gone with the man,” Banunaek was quoted as saying by AFP.
Meanwhile, Malaysian police are investigating the case for murder and have arrested two siblings, aged 36 and 39, and their 60-year-old mother.
Adelina had been working at their semi-detached house in Taman Kota Permai in Bukit Mertajam.
She was taken to the Bukit Mertajam Hospital, where she later died, after a concerned neighbour who spotted her with wounds on her hands and legs alerted the office of Bukit Mertajam MP Steven Sim, whose aides informed the police as well as the human rights NGO, Tenaganita.
Adelina had also been reportedly seen sleeping next to a Rottweiler in the back porch of the house for two months.
Dead Indonesian maid’s family demands 3 years’ ‘unpaid’ salary