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A relative said Nhaveen was supposed to leave for Kuala Lumpur yesterday (Monday) to enrol in a college for a music-composing course.
“He loves music. He worked as a promoter after SPM to gather some pocket money to head to KL to study.
“Nhaveen is so friendly and jovial. I spoke to him last week and he wanted to come over to my place for chicken curry.
“But looking at the way he is now, I do not know if he will come back at all,” Naveen’s aunt said when met at the Penang Hospital yesterday.
The relative said Nhaveen and his close friend, T Previin, 19, had worked as promoters at a men’s section of a mall in Bayan Lepas after SPM.
Nhaveen was set upon by six men who repeatedly beat him up with helmets, before taking him to a field close to his home in Taman Tun Sardon, Gelugor, where they continued their severe assault, torturing him according to his friend Previin, here late Friday night.
Previin, who was with him, was seriously hurt as well, having his cheekbones crushed as a result of the assault.
Nhaveen has been declared brain dead at the Penang Hospital while Previin is receiving treatment at the same hospital.
Nhaveen is injured in the head, hip and anus. There were also burn marks on his back.
Doctors treating him said his anus was torn badly, likely due to a blunt object being inserted inside.
Police immediately arrested five men, aged 16 to 18, for investigations for rioting.
Wooed by secret society members
Being “effeminate” is not the only reason why Nhaveen was beaten up and tortured. It was also his refusal to join a secret society gang.
A close friend said the ruffians who set on him on Friday night had wanted him to join a “gangster group”.
The friend said illegal gangs had been going around recruiting young members from schools.
He added the men who set upon them were “acquaintances” of Nhaveen and Previin.
“But Nhaveen and Previin refused to join them. They wanted to work and have a normal life,” the close friend, who refused to be identified, said.
A relative, upset by the beating and torture, said it was unfair to treat the case as just another bullying case.
He said the case should be treated as murder or attempted murder.
“Sure, he (Nhaveen) has been called names in school, but he has left school for so long now.
“This is in the adult world. Why are people still calling it a bullying case?”
Nhaveen was epileptic, and he also did not fight back when being hit by the boys.
“Previin told us that Nhaveen was attacked mercilessly by the boys, who used their helmets to hit him, but he did not fight back at all.
“Nhaveen had even asked Previin to stop hitting them back,” an aunt of Nhaveen’s said.
Since he was also epileptic, the aunt added, he could likely have suffered a fit when the incident happened.
She said Nhaveen was on medication for his epilepsy as he has a small tumour in his brain.
‘Come pick up your son’
It is also learnt that right after Nhaveen was bashed up, one of the assailants contacted Nhaveen’s mother.
“They told his mother, ‘Come pick your son up’. The mother was so worried to head out, she asked her brother to go.
“Nhaveen’s uncle was shocked to see him lying unconscious in a pool of blood on Jalan Kaki Bukit,” a relative said.
Not satisfied with assaulting the two youths, the attackers waited outside the Taman Tun Sardon Flats for Nhaveen’s 16-year-old sister.
“They kept screaming, ‘you are next’, as a warning to the sister. His sister stayed inside the house until a relative came to pick her up.
“She was terrified,” the relative said.
Cops to investigate
Penang police chief Commissoner Chuah Ghee Lye said assertions of “gang-related” elements and any other matters suggested by the relatives will be investigated.
He told the public to remain calm as police had already arrested five individuals who admitted to assaulting Nhaveen and Previin.
Chuah said police had acted swiftly by arresting them almost immediately and promised a thorough investigation into the matter.
“It is too premature to say anything for now. Please let us investigate and let’s not conjure up anything we are not absolutely sure about,” he told FMT.
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