Hong Kong: British banker Rurik Jutting accused of double murder to face trial in October 2016

The trial date for British banker Rurik Jutting, 30, accused of killing two Indonesian women in his apartment last year has been set for October next year. His 20-day full trial before a High Court in the former British colony will take place from 25 Oct to 21 November.

Jutting, a former employee of Bank of America-Merrill Lynch underwent two weeks of psychiatric evaluation last year. The court decided he was fit to stand trial and he has been in police custody since.

The banker is alleged to have summoned police to his apartment in Wanchai, a red light district area in Hong Kong on 1 November. Police found a naked woman, Seneng Mujiaish bleeding from knife wounds in the living room. She later died from her injuries.

Police also found another the body of Sumarti Ningsih stuffed in a suitcase on the balcony of the apartment. Her body was nearly decapitated. Both women had entered the country as domestic helpers but are suspected of working in the sex trade.

Jutting moved to Hong Kong from London in July 2013. According to media reports, he is believed to have quit his high-paying job just days before the murders.

He is believed to have gone to a pub near his apartment building for a pint after allegedly killing his first victim Sumarti, whose body was found in a suitcase. The Telegraph said that when he was arrested, Jutting was pallid, unshaven and bloated, almost unrecognisable from the photographs taken before he arrived in Hong Kong.

The banker grew up in Surrey where his mother Helen ran a nursery class in Chertsey before opening a milkshake bar in Woking. His father Graham is a millwright. Jutting went to Peterhouse College in Cambridge in 2005 and after graduation, he joined Barclays where he worked in the structured capital markets team.