Indonesian police made little effort to catch the Bali Nine's suspected drug supplier alive, fatally shooting him shortly after entering his home, a police report reveals.
Disturbing questions about the killing of Nepalese national Man Singh Ghale are raised by alleged events noted in the report, which is among pages of secret Indonesian police files obtained by Fairfax relating to global heroin trafficking.
Details of Ghale's killing 10 days after the Bali nine arrests have previously been kept confidential prompting his distraught family to demand an investigation by Australian authorities given their role in triggering the operation.
He was quickly nominated by Indonesian and Australian Federal Police as being the likely supplier of the heroin found strapped to the bodies of the Australians arrested in Bali.
But months later, police back-flipped about Ghale's status, saying he was only on the periphery of the syndicate responsible for the heroin supply.
His death, however, extinguished a number of key leads, including his potential knowledge of mysterious Thai prostitute Chery Likibamakom who is suspected of bringing the heroin from Thailand to Bali.
Indonesian police appeared to either have completely bungled or corruptly failed to arrest Likibamakom – at one point claiming they did not have the right paperwork to hold her when she was stopped on the Thai-Cambodian border in the days after the Bali nine arrest.
The failure to arrest Likibamakom, who is said to have since died, closed down a major opportunity to catching the kingpins who supplied the heroin from Asia.
The Indonesian police report obtained by Fairfax Media details the shooting of Ghale and reveals he was shot in the neck, chest and knee after he allegedly pulled out a gun shortly after police entered his house.
The report was compiled by Jakarta drug squad officer Heru Februanto, who indicates there were no witnesses to the shooting except he and his team after Ghale's two female companions left the room just before the shooting.
It also suggests that Ghale knew Februanto personally.
Februanto alleges that he and his team broke into Ghale's residence in the Bekasi district of Jakarta about 2.30pm on April 27, 2005, as part of a drug trafficking investigation. i
"It was confirmed, that in fact, inside the house fugitive Man Singh Ghale was sitting in the middle room watching TV accompanied by two female friends," wrote Februanto.
"At the same time the two women were going out of the room and were arrested by officers, while fugitive Man Singh Ghale greeted police officer Heru Februanto (by saying), 'Mr Heru … I'm sorry'."
"Suddenly fugitive Man Singh Ghale produced a gun from his hip and, since it was seen as endangering the officer's life, fugitive Man Singh Ghale was disabled by shots that hit his knees, chest and neck."
Februanto states that he immediately took the wounded Ghale to the Dr Soekanto Police Hospital in Kramatjati to get first aid treatment but Ghale died on the way.
The women, one of whom was Indonesian and the other a Nepalese national, were taken in for questioning.
The report, which Indonesian police have never officially released, is also contradicted by accounts given by Ghale's neighbours at the time of the shooting. The neighbours claimed they saw Ghale being walked out to a police vehicle after his arrest without visible sign of major injury.
The scenario is just one of the many contradictions about Ghale's capture and Indonesian police's failed investigation into the heroin supply.
Other documents obtained by Fairfax Media include an official Indonesian police intelligence drug kingpin link chart which lists Ghale as being among five foreigners implicated in a worldwide drug distribution network that had representatives in Indonesia, Pakistan, India, Nepal, Thailand, China and parts of Africa and Europe.
Many of the kingpins are Nigerian or Pakistani nationals who appear to have married Nepalese or Indonesian women.
It also lists dozens of names of middle level operatives based in Indonesia, like Meirika Franola, AKA Ola, a middle-aged Indonesian woman, who was initially on death row for drug offences before having her sentence commuted to life.
Ghale, however, appears to be the only kingpin who was either captured or killed by Indonesian authorities.
