KUALA LUMPUR – The Bangladeshi boy, who was found in a shipping container in Port Klang earlier this year, drowned in his home country yesterday.
Months after he was repatriated to Bangladesh after accidentally arriving in Malaysia in January, Md Ratul Islam Fahim drowned while bathing alone at a pond near his house in Cummila which is 100km southwest of Dhaka, bdnews24 reported.
Saiful Alam, a local police station chief, was quoted as saying that the incident was under investigation.
However, Ratul’s father Faruk Mia, who works as a labourer, claimed his son was mentally challenged and was unable to swim.
Faruk also told the local news site that the victim – who is his eldest child – was bathing alone at the time of the incident as other family members were harvesting paddy.
“How can I live on after this?” the father asked.
On January 21, Ratul was repatriated to his home country via a flight to Dhaka from the Kuala Lumpur International Airport, accompanied by officials from the Bangladesh Embassy in Kuala Lumpur.
At the time, Bernama quoted Home Minister Datuk Seri Saifuddin Nasution Ismail as saying that the 16-year-old Bangladeshi was not a stowaway (nor trafficked) but was accidentally trapped in the container when the ship docked in Bangladesh.
“When discovered (here), the boy was very weak and was nursed back to health on humanitarian grounds even though there was no document on him,” he said, adding that the teenager was treated at Tengku Ampuan Rahimah Hospital in Klang and placed under the care of the Chow Kit Foundation from January 26. – The Vibes, April 30, 2023
