Hot-tempered Datuk held

PETALING JAYA: Police have arrested two people, including a Datuk, after videos of the two getting involved in an argument and slapping two others in a hotpot restaurant here went viral.

Both men, aged 39 and 42, were arrested by police on Thursday at Mutiara Damansara, less than two days after the victims reported the assault to police.

“Police will get a remand order to detain them further to investigate their background, as well as to ascertain if they are linked to any gang activities, ” Selangor CID chief Senior Asst Comm Datuk Fadzil Ahmat said in a statement.

He said the older man, a Datuk, had a police record dating back to 2019 for criminal intimidation.

The argument broke out at the hotpot restaurant in Tropicana Avenue on Tuesday night, hours before the movement control order was implemented.

Two videos, one 29 seconds and the other 51 seconds long, of the incident had been posted and gone viral on social media.

Petaling Jaya OCPD Asst Comm Nik Ezanee Mohd Faisal said the incident started after the suspects were told off for talking too loudly in the restaurant.

“Both suspects, who were drunk, attacked the person who made the complaint, ” he said.

According to the initial police report, the two suspects also slapped a waitress.

However, Chinese vernacular newspapers reported that the suspect slapped the victim’s girlfriend.

In the 29-second video, the two men can be seen slapping an unidentified victim, presumably the complainant, while gesturing aggressively at him. One of them also slapped a woman as they were about to leave the restaurant.

The longer video shows one of the suspects being held back by another person as he aggressively tried to slap a man wearing a blue T-shirt.

However, as he was being pacified, he knocked down a chair before slapping a woman.

This led to another round of a heated argument with the man who was threatened earlier by one of the suspects.

The second suspect then approached the man, tried to hit him with his hand and cornered him against a wall.