Supari Muhammad, the senior investigating officer at the Petaling Jaya police district headquarters from 2017 to 2018, said he was not directly involved with the case at the time but was offering his expertise to the other investigators.
He said a police report was lodged by the owner of the house, Peter Pormanan, in March 2017.
“I visited the house a week later. I found no criminal elements, so I passed it (the case) to the OCS (officer in charge of the Sungai Way police station).”
Supari was then shown a picture of the master bedroom taken by Ruth’s sister, Ram Ram Sitepu, who had lodged a police report over the couple’s disappearance in February 2018.
Ram Ram had submitted the picture together with her report, which had shown the bed in a mess with various items strewn across the bedsheet.
Supari claimed the bedroom was not in a mess when he had visited the scene.
“Based on my memory, it did not look like that. Everything was neat and orderly,” he told the inquiry.
He said there was no indication that anybody had left the house in a hurry.
“The house was locked and there was no forced entry. There were also no clothes or other items scattered on the floor,” he said.
Asked why he had not searched the room to look for further clues such as passports or other documents, Supari said: “At the time, we did not want to disturb the scene too much. Whatever that was already left opened, yes, we could look. But for me to search the room, that was not my intention at the time.”
He said he had originally intended to visit the scene to determine whether or not the address was correct, and to look for any indication that a crime had taken place, including if there were any bodies.
“We need to think of that (bodies) because maybe he had killed himself, or killed someone.”
Supari also said there was no connection between Joshua’s disappearance and the case of missing Pastor Raymond Koh, who was said to be a victim of enforced disappearance.
“Police were pursuing many angles and one of the angles was that both of them were spreading Christianity,” he said.
However, he said the case was later investigated as a missing person’s case, and police did not specifically look at the religious factors.
Joshua, a Malay-Muslim who converted to Christianity, and Ruth have been missing for over three years. They were last seen on Nov 30, 2016.