Police uncover human trafficking ring, 12-year-old among victims

KULIM: Police raided a house in Taman Rambai and uncovered a syndicate that brings in foreigners illegally on the pretext of getting them jobs, then tortures and locks them up unless they pay the demanded fee.

Kulim police chief Supt Abdullah Arshad said the police raiding team found 18 frail foreigners, 11 of them Bangladeshis and seven Myanmar nationals, at the double-storey house during the raid at 1.15am.

One of the foreigners was only 12 years old and another had a badly scalded back caused by hot water, Supt Abdullah said, adding that some of the migrants had been chained by the leg.

"They were all frail as they alleged that they were often beaten or roughed up by members of the syndicate that brought them into the country," he said.

During the raid, two men believed to be syndicate members fled through the roof of the house that had been rented by a Myanmar man since November last year.

Abdullah said the raid provided the police with answers to the discovery of two bodies of foreign nationals at a Chinese cemetery next to Taman Kijang, Lunas, and one body wrapped in black plastic sheet in Batu Putih, Sungai Karangan, last December.

"These are believed to be linked to the syndicate, besides the discovery of the body of a foreigner in Jalan Labu Besar here early this year," he said.

Abdullah said police found out from the migrants that they had paid 200,000 taka (about RM10,000) to the syndicate to enter and work in the country.

They would arrive at the Malaysian border with Thailand and would be brought in by the syndicate to the house on the pretext of providing them temporary shelter until they were sent elsewhere to work, he said.

However, they would be asked to pay the syndicate another 200,000 taka or find themselves locked up and tortured, he added.

"If any of them died, the body will be dumped anywhere," he said. - Bernama