Kuala Lumpur: The video of an Indian man being kicked and humiliated for sleeping outside a bank in Malaysia’s Kuala Lumpur has led to outrage among social media users.
Safiudeen Pakkeer Mohamed (39), from Tamil Nadu, left home in 2024 to work in Malaysia to support his family. He has a wife and two sons back home.
Mohamed told Malaysian news outlet FMT that he landed in the state he is in now after his passport and wages were withheld by his former employer.
“I just want to go back home,” Mohamed said.
He told FMT that he had paid RM3,500 (Rs 75,500 approximately) for a work permit and RM1,200 (Rs 26,000) for healthcare to his employer before starting to work as a cook at a restaurant in Sri Gombak, Kuala Lumpur.
Things soon went downhill for the Indian man though. His employer began withholding his salary. Sometimes he did not receive his wages for months on end, leaving him unable to send money back home.
Mohamed claimed that his employer even withheld his passport so he could not go back to India. When he wanted to quit, he was not allowed to do so. This prompted him to stop going to work around six months ago.
As he had no money, passport, job or a place to stay, Mohamed was forced to sleep on the streets of Kuala Lumpur. He had been sleeping outside AmBank’s Taman Maluri branch for a few days before he was humiliated, sprayed with water and asked to leave.
The video footage shows a female security guard turning on a tap to hose down Mohamed, who was sitting on the sidewalk outside the bank. A middle-aged cobbler soon joined the female security guard. He is seen kicking Mohamed and asking him to leave.
“If they had only told me to leave, I would have gone quietly. I was very weak, hungry, stressed, and depressed,” he told FMT.
Mohamed has now been taken in by Tony Lian, who runs shelters for homeless people. Lian has said he plans to get Safiudeen’s employer to return his passport. He also wants to raise funds to settle his debts.
