Sunday September 23, 2012

Indonesian killed in fall

MALACCA: An Indonesian man died when he fell from the fifth floor of his flat in Ayer Keroh near here while trying to escape from immigration officers.

The incident at midnight on Friday shocked many nearby residents during the 6P programme enforcement operations from 11pm on Friday to 3.30am yesterday.

In one unit at Taman Tasik Utama, the occupants were hiding above the ceiling panel of a room when officers forced open the front grill with a bolt cutter.

One of the foreigners, known as Mathoseh among his housemates, managed to escape to the roof via the ceiling.

Deadly flight: Immigration officers attending to the Indonesian man in critical condition after the fall.

He, however, slipped from the rainwater gutter he was holding on to.

A Civil Defence emergency response team, which arrived 15 minutes later, rushed Mathoseh to hospital, where he was pronounced dead due to internal injuries.

It was learnt that he did not possess any valid documents and had been working as a construction worker over the last 10 months.

He was married and had two children back at his home in East Java.

Malacca Immigration Department director Kamalludin Ismail said four women and a man from Indonesia were found hiding above the ceiling in the same flat unit, while five women and a man from Thailand were picked up from several other units there.

“Another 14 women from China, a man from Myanmar and a husband and wife from Cambodia were also picked up from an entertainment outlet in Taman Melaka Raya and a house in Paya Rumput during the operations.

“We spent about two weeks observing them following a tip-off,” he said.

The operation, led by Kamalludin, involved 25 enforcement officers.

He said all suspects, aged between 18 and 47, would be sent to the detention depot in Machap Umboo, Alor Gajah, pending further investigation.

Twenty of them were arrested for not having valid permits, three for overstaying and nine for violating their permits.

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