KUCHING: The police arrested six men suspected to be involved in the recent assault case involving a GrabCar vehicle at E-mart Tudan in Miri earlier this month.
According to a statement by Sarawak CID chief, SAC Dato’ Dev Kumar Sree Shunmugam, acting on information received, the police apprehended a 19-year-old man in Lutong at 8.20pm on Friday.
The arrest of the first suspect led the police to arrest a second suspect, aged 34, several hours later at Chia Tze Road.
“On 8 July, at 3.00pm, four more suspects, aged between 21 and 32, were arrested in a house at Taman Desa Seri, Miri.
“A Honda Odyssey car found at the house was searched and seized. Among the items seized from the car and house were a baseball bat, 2 iron rods and a rattan rod,” said Dev Kumar.
He added that the phone number used by the one of the suspects to call the driver was found to be deactivated after the incident and was registered under a false name.
Dev Kumar said initial investigation revealed that the motive of the attack was not due to unhappiness among taxi drivers towards the ride hailing services as speculated earlier.
“There is another motive that the police are now probing that is related to this group of suspects arrested. We are unable to further divulge details at the moment.
“We would like to assure the public that this is an isolated incident and has been contained,” he said.
The suspects have been remanded for four days to facilitate police investigation.
