Missing Indian ‘confirmed dead’ in Malaysia

KUALA LUMPUR - An Indian businessman, who arrived here in January to conclude a business deal and then went missing, is “confirmed dead”, a media report said Monday.

Allal Kanthan Muthuraja, 35, of Chennai was received by two Malaysian lawyer brothers, but went missing after he spoke to his family from their farm house at Banting in Selangor state.

The lawyer brothers, as yet not named, have been arrested with their six “henchmen” in several cases of “disappearances” and murders of people, the New Straits Times reported.

Police have also sought the help of their Indian counterparts and the Interpol.

Muthuraja’s wife S. Usharani, who arrived in Malaysia from Chennai last Wednesday, went to the Kuala Langat police headquarters in Selangor to have her statement recorded for the third time, the report said.

Muthuraja’s younger brother, Kasi Viswanathan, also here as part of the ongoing probe, told media Sunday that he had met one of the lawyer brothers implicated in Malaysian woman millionaire Sosilawati Lawiya’s murder, who then took him to lodge a missing person report at the Klang district police station.

“Unscrupulous people”, among them traders and politicians, took advantage of the “desperation” faced by his family and had cheated them.

A family friend had put Kasi into contact with an Indian businessman in Chennai who had lived in Malaysia for 13 years and had many contacts here. When he met the businessman, he was promised that Muthuraja would be back “within the next 48 hours”.

“However, soon after that, the businessman told me his Malaysian contacts were doing field work to locate Muthuraja,” The Star quoted him as saying.

Kasi claimed that at the end of January, the businessman had also put him on the phone with a Malaysian “politician”, whom he addressed as “YB”.

“Initially, there was no mention of money but the Indian businessman started demanding for it. We paid him in stages, beginning with RM30,000 ($9,600),” he said.

Kasi claimed that he was told Muthuraja was with one Elil, whom he had met through his brother in Chennai in July last year.

“I was told by Elil that they would bring my brother to the airport and put him on the same flight with me March 24. I went to the airport but both Elil and my brother were nowhere to be seen.”

“However, Elil was on the phone with me until the plane took off,” he said, adding that Elil had claimed that there were “some problems” and Muthuraja would be on his way back to Chennai after that.

“The police asked me to invite Elil for a meal so that they could ambush him but he did not come,” Kasi said.