2455) MALAY MAIL – 20/12/15 – TWO HURT IN KOTARAYA FIGHT OVER HANDPHONE
21 Dec 2015
Mohd Ali Baharom (centre), better known as Ali Tinju, led a small group of ‘red shirted’ demonstrators outside Kotaraya last Friday.
KUALA LUMPUR, Dec 20 — A fight broke out at the Kotaraya shopping centre in the city this afternoon that left two people injured after a Muslim consumer group held a news conference to highlight an alleged handphone scam there, The Star Online reported this evening.
According to the report, some 20 men armed with sticks and helmets stormed a handphone shop in the mall at about 5pm seeking refunds and got into an argument with the workers that turned violent.
Prior to the brawl, the Muslim Consumers Association of Malaysia (PPIM) held a news conference outside the shop and called for refunds to be given to those allegedly cheated by the operators, The Star Online added.
“They came shortly after the group held a press conference outside the shop to demand refunds. There were about 20 men who came with sticks and helmets and got into a fight with about eight workers in the shop.
“From what we can see, only one table was smashed by the brawlers and a few handphones are missing,” Dang Wangi Criminal Investigation Department chief Deputy Superintendant M Gunalan was quoted saying by the news portal.
Gunalan was reported saying the police do not believe the brawlers were related to PPIM.
The two people injured in the melee were taken to the Tung Shin Hospital for treatment, the policeman added.
The police are currently looking for the troublemakers.
The handphone scam issue first surfaced online last week, in which a man was reportedly lured into a shop at Kotaraya with an offer to buy four handphones for RM200 each, only to be detained against his will and later forced to withdraw money from an ATM to buy the lot for the jacked up price of RM10,000.
No mention was made of the ethnicity of the handphone merchants in the original posting in local website Siakapkeli.
However, a former soldier Mohd Ali Baharom led a small group of “red shirted” demonstrators outside Kotaraya last Friday, calling for a boycott of the shopping centre linking the case to unscrupulous Chinese traders in a reminder of his previous antics outside another city tech mall, Low Yat Plaza in July, which later turned into a racial brawl.
The controversial leader of the “red shirt” movement, better known as Ali Tinju, also called the government to train ethnic Chinese handphone traders to prevent future cases of cheating.
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