GEORGE TOWN: Police have detained two local men to help in the investigation into the death of an Indonesian man, whose body was found with his left leg chained to a chair in the parking lot of an apartment in Jelutong here, on April 22.
Northeast district police chief, ACP Soffian Santong, said police used intelligence and surveillance work to track the victim’s 52-year-old housemate, who fled after the incident. He was arrested at a hotel in Jalan Penang here at 12.10 am today.
“The second man, also a local, 45, was detained today at 1.30 am at a house in Jalan Lintang, Air Itam, here. Both were remanded until April 29,” he said when contacted by Bernama today.
He said that, based on the investigation, the police had reclassified the case as murder under Section 302 of the Penal Code. Prior to this, it was classified as sudden death.
The body of the 33-year-old Indonesian man was found by residents at about 5.40 pm, before they alerted the police.
Based on preliminary investigation, the victim, together with another man, a local, rented an apartment unit in Jelutong, which had been turned into a homestay since April 13.
In a separate development, Soffian said the police were conducting further investigations over the finding of a body of a student, who was believed to have fallen from the eighth floor of Desa Siswa Tekum, Universiti Sains Malaysia (USM), last night.
He said the body of the 22-year-old male student from the School of Education Studies, was found in the compound of the hostel building and the police were alerted of the incident at 10.30 pm.
The body was sent to the Penang Hospital for a post-mortem and, the police had classified the case as sudden death, he said.
Earlier, a story of a USM student who was found dead after he was believed to have fallen from a hostel building went viral on social media. The victim was identified as Lukman Hakim Mat Rani. - Bernama
