A Domestic International Affair Gone Wrong

The community I live in is an interesting one: it is quite cosmopolitan but perhaps not in glamorous way. I was once the President of my apartment’s committee, this allowed to get to know the people more: the workers more than others. I am no longer the president but the experience had left me with good rapport with some of my neighbours and the workers. I would often stop at our guard house to chat. A few nights ago, I noticed that there was some excitement at the guard house and there were a couple of my neighbours there also. They told me that I had missed a real-life drama.

At the apartment building lived, note that I said ‘lived’, a Bangladeshi guy whom I will call Karim for this piece and his Indonesian “wife”. He told us that they were married and we had no reason to doubt him at the time. They seemed like a regular couple. He was a hard worker and he soon was able to afford a car – a second hand Proton Saga – and his wife rode a motorcycle. I think he once told me that he had obtained permanent residency here. Again, I had no reason to doubt him.

Apparently, earlier that night, Karim’s wife and son had arrived from Bangladesh to look for him. She has a brother who was working in Kuala Lumpur also.  It seems that Karim had not been sending any money back to Bangladesh for about two years. The brother brought the wife and son to Karim’s place where he stayed with his Indonesian “wife”. That was when all hell broke loose. I was informed that Karim had beaten his wife and son and the Indonesian woman had gotten in on the art. The wife escaped to the guard house with Karim in pursuit. The guards, also Bangladeshis, decided to call someone who could do something about this issue, so they called another neighbour of ours who happens to be a police officer. Upon hearing this, Karim and his Indonesian ‘wife’ skedaddled off in his car.

Our policeman neighbour then brought the wife and boy to the house. They decided to stay there and the police officer told them that if anything like this happened again, she was free to call him or one of the other police officers who lived in the building. Karim and his Indonesian mate disappeared.

Yesterday, I came back from a trip to the east coast. That night, I stopped at the guard house after dinner. They informed me that the second part of the Karim saga had unfolded.

Apparently, Karim and his Indonesian came back after some cooling off. At first, the four seemed to have gotten it together. For a few days, things were quiet.

On Sunday morning, Karim’s next door neighbour was startled by a women calling for help from the balcony. She told her to calm down and she called the guards. The guards who had already known of Karim’s issue, did not waste any time in calling the police officer. The police officer came with a squad of police personnel. They took photos of the door which was locked from the outside as evidence. They called the house owner who arrived promptly. They obtained permission from the owner to break through. Actually, it was not as dramatic as that, they simply used a large bolt cutter.

Inside they found the woman who had injuries from being beaten and tied. She had broken free of her binds and managed to cry for help at the balcony. She and her son had been beaten, tied up and then left in a room to die. I think Karim had thought that they would not be able to break free of the bindings. The police took photos and then whisked the two off to the hospital. They also informed the woman’s brother who arrived just in time to accompany the two to the hospital. I was told that Karim and his Indonesian partner had taken away their belongings before. They had told the woman that they had tied the two and left them in the room so that they would die of starvation and dehydration. All this were taken down by the police.

It seems that later that day one of the guards had somehow gotten in touch with Karim to find out where he was. In the conversation, he had told Karim that his wife and son had been taken to the hospital. Karim then said that he was going to kill the woman’s brother for breaking into his apartment and taking rm 20,000 which he claimed was in the house. The guard did not inform his that it was in fact the police who had broken in with the house owner’s permission and they had already ascertained that there was no such thing as rm 20,000 in the apartment.

So now, Karim is hiding somewhere and possibly contemplating murder without knowing that the police is already looking for him. We speculated that the charges they have on his includes assault and battery, causing harm, illegal imprisonment, attempted murder and making two death threats. To make matters worse, for Karim, I was informed that the Embassy been informed and are cooperating with the police in looking for Karim.

I am just in awe at how Karim almost effortlessly had escalated a simple domestic issue into a crime. It must have taken an impressive amount of unbridled passion fueled stupidity to achieve that.