SIBU: The police here arrested two men yesterday afternoon to help in the probe of a double murder in a rubber estate at Rantau Panjang.
The cops have identified the two suspects, aged 23 and 49, and are probing whether they were involved in the case of two foreign tappers found slashed to death last Sunday.
They are determining whether the rubber tapping of the two could have led to rivalry or revenge; and whether they were illegal tappers encroaching into another plantation.
The two were taken in for questioning in the early afternoon, and detained to help in the probe.
They are expected to be remanded today under Section 117 of the Criminal Procedure Code.
On Sunday morning, a plantation worker found the bodies of the two Indonesians aged 21 and 27 near their make-shift tent. The worker informed his boss who called the police.
The cops arrived to find that the two had been dead for more than a day. They had been slashed and stabbed. They were only clad in their underwear, indicating they could have been attacked while asleep.
The body of the 21-year-old, covered with a mosquito net, had multiple wounds on the neck and stomach; while that of the older man has wounds on the face, head and stomach. His right leg was fractured.
Sibu police chief ACP Shafie Ismail said the case had been classified as murder under Section 302 of the Penal Code which carries the mandatory death sentence on conviction.
The Rantau Panjang killing is the ninth murder this year.