KUALA LUMPUR – The recent murder of a 6-year-old autistic boy, Zayn Rayyan Abdul Matiin, has dredged up the spectre of past cases where innocent children were found dead after going missing for extended periods.
Zayn Rayyan’s body, which was discovered beside a stream near his family’s residence in Damansara Damai, just a day after a police report was lodged on his disappearance, showed signs of asphyxiation and was covered in defensive wounds.
The nation, which was holding out hope for the boy’s safe return to his parents, has been left reeling from the reclassification of the case from sudden death to murder.
As police investigate Zayn Rayyan’s premature death, Scoop takes a look back at several high-profile cases spanning decades where parents were put through their worst nightmare of losing their child.
Ang May Hong
A three-hour-long agonising search for 9-year-old Ang May Hong led to a horrifying discovery when her body was found by her father on April 12, 1987 about 200-m away from their home in Jalan Ipoh. Ang, who went missing after going out to buy breakfast with her 11-year-old brother, was found with a metre-long piece of nail-studded wood stuffed into her private parts, causing extensive damage to her internal organs.
Her body, which was found at an empty house believed to have been frequented by drug addicts, was also littered with various injuries indicating that the child had been beaten.
While the perpetrator behind Ang’s killing remains at large as no one was ever charged for the crime, the case generated public anger, leading to demonstrators voicing their concerns at a gathering held in front of a stall run by Ang’s father.
Nurul Huda Abdul Ghani
On January 17, 2004, 10-year-old Nurul Huda Abdul Ghani left her house in Gelang Patah, Johor on her bicycle to purchase some household items from a nearby convenience store.
Described as a cheerful and friendly young girl, Nurul Huda’s siblings started to feel pinpricks of anxiety when she failed to show up back home about three hours after she left the house, causing her brother to lodge a police report.
As police and the girl’s elder brother conducted searches around the area on the same day, they stopped at a newly built TNB power station located on the route between Nurul Huda’s house and the grocery store.
When authorities attempted to search the compound, they faced resistance from the security guard, Mohd Abbas Danus Baksan, who is said to have threatened police with a parang in an attempt to prevent them from carrying out their checks.
Once police managed to enter the station’s toilet, they stumbled upon a devastating scene: a visibly weakened Nurul Huda had been stripped of her clothes, bound, gagged and left in a corner of the toilet.
While the young girl was still alive at that time, she later succumbed to her injuries caused by repeated rapes and sodomy.
Abbas, who claimed to have been assisted by two other accomplices, was subsequently charged in court and found guilty of murdering Nurul Huda.
In 2008, he escaped the death penalty and was instead sentenced to 20 years in prison after the Federal Court found that the prosecution had failed to show that he was the sole perpetrator behind the killing.
Nurin Jazlin Jazimin
After going out to a night market near her house in Wangsa Maju to buy a hair clip on August 20, 2007, 8-year-old Nurin Jazlin Jazimin never made it home to her parents and siblings.
Instead, on September 20 the same year, police confirmed that a corpse found in a gym bag left at the staircase of a shoplot in Petaling Jaya matched DNA from Nurin’s parents.
The child was found to have been put through an immense ordeal, as the autopsy revealed that a cucumber and brinjal were stuffed inside her genitals, causing her rectum to rupture and leading to bacterial infection that contributed to her death – over six hours before her body was found.
A day after the body was verified to be Nurin, a special team headed by then-Bukit Aman criminal investigation department director Datuk Christopher Wan Soo Kee was formed to search for the culprit behind her murder.
As part of the team’s investigations, five suspects were detained for their alleged involvement in the case. However, four of them were immediately released, with the exception being an Indonesian woman, who was said to have swallowed a SIM card after her arrest.
While the woman was later sentenced to seven months’ jail for entering the country illegally, no charges have been pressed against anyone for causing Nurin’s death.
In September this year, Scoop spoke to Nurin’s father, Jazimin Abdul Jalil, who said that although 16 years have passed since his daughter’s tragic death, he has not given up hope for the perpetrators to be brought to justice.
Nurin’s brutal death led to the establishment of the National Urgent Response (NUR) Alert System, modelled on the US child abduction emergency alert, or Amber Alert, to spread information on missing children.
Nurul Nadirah Abdullah
When 5-year-old Nurul Nadirah Abdullah left her home in Pasir Gudang, Johor to run some errands for her mother on March 1, 2012, her family never thought that they would never see her alive again.
After Nurul Nadirah, fondly known as “Dirang,” failed to make it back home with the instant noodles and eggs her mother had asked her to buy, police were contacted and a massive search for the missing girl commenced.
A week after her disappearance, police confirmed that the charred body of a child found in a pit at an oil palm plantation within the area was Nurul Nadirah.
Labourer Muidin Maidin, who was 25-years-old then, was then detained and charged with the girl’s murder. The post-mortem results presented to the court during his trial revealed that his DNA matched the samples found in Nurul Nadirah’s private parts.
It was also said that Muidin had suffocated the victim by cupping her mouth and nose tightly, molested her and then burnt her body at a separate location.
In 2013, the accused was found guilty of murdering Nurul Nadirah and sentenced to death.
The high court judge who meted out the maximum sentence to Muidin reportedly highlighted the many factors that contributed to Nurul Nadirah’s death, namely public apathy during the girl’s kidnapping, irresponsible parenting and the characteristics of the killer.
Noor Amila Edrus Norsham
On August 18, 2016, the body of 5-year-old Noor Amila Edrus Norsham was found along the Kg Kemensah river in Hulu Kelang after he was reported missing from his home in Jinjang Utara about a week prior.
The discovery came after police detained the child’s 25-year-old relative, Norhamid Nor Muhamad, who led police to the location where Noor Amila’s body was found. While it was initially rumoured that the boy had been decapitated, police later dismissed the claim.
It was reported then that while Noor Amila’s family had desperately searched for him, Norhamid had locked the tied-up and gagged child in a car workshop and left him without food or drink, causing the young boy to suffer for nine hours before an asthma attack claimed his life.
Norhamid, who had allegedly taken part in search efforts to recover Noor Amila, was said to have disposed of the body by throwing the child off of a cliff about 20-m high.
On August 24, six days after Noor Amila’s body was uncovered, Norhamid was charged with the child’s murder. – December 9, 2023