Indian lawyer missing after meeting friends in Malaysia

KUALA LUMPUR - A housewife, who hails from India’s Chennai city, has alleged that her husband ‘disappeared’ after he met in Malaysia two lawyer brothers who were his friends and business partners.

M. Usharani, who was here to lodge a complaint with the police and now has returned to Chennai, told The Star newspaper that the lawyer brothers, who have been detained over the gruesome murder of businesswoman Sosilawati Lawiya and three others, had been friends with her husband A. Muthuraja for 10 years.

The brothers have been arrested by the Malaysian police along with six other suspects.

Usharani said Muthuraja, a lawyer and financier and an Indian national, disappeared in Banting, Klang, after he came here on a visit in January.

She said her financier husband had arrived in Malaysia Jan 18 after the two lawyer brothers invited him in Banting.

“They told him it was compulsory to come and that he could return to India in a day,” said Usharani, adding that her last contact with Muthuraja was on that day.

“My husband told me that the lawyers had picked him up and he was with them at their family home when I spoke to him,” Usharani told the newspaper over telephone from Chennai.

Usharani, 24, said that when she telephoned one of the brothers Jan 19 after being unable to contact her husband, she was told they did not know if Muthuraja had even come to Malaysia.

Usharani, who has a three-year-old daughter, flew to Kuala Lumpur Sep 7 and lodged a report at the Banting police station on her husband’s disappearance before she returned to Chennai Sep 9.

She said she had called the lawyer brothers and their family members several times when she failed to contact Muthuraja.

“Their wives and family members were very rude.”

“I found this strange because as family friends I thought they would be concerned,” the newspaper quoted her as saying.

Usharani said that when she persisted in calling and demanding to know where Muthuraja was, the brothers and family members told her he had been caught smuggling ketamine and was in police custody.

“I made countless telephone calls and faxed a note to Interpol and the Indian high commission in Malaysia.”

Usharani said Muthuraja’s brother Kasiviswanathan came to Banting four months ago to look for him but the lawyer brothers sent him back to Chennai with Muthuraja’s luggage.

“They told him that since my husband was involved in a serious drug case, we should lie low…I don’t want to believe my husband was harmed by his friends. Ten years of friendship must amount to something,” she said.

Muthuraja’s case came to light after the police probing the killing of Sosilawati, the owner of a beautycare chain, and three others, possibly after a business deal with lawyer-brothers fell through.

The killing took place on the brothers’ farm house. The Daily Star, reporting that nine more could have been killed there.