An Indian national working in a local resort was attacked with a hammer and mugged while in Male’ city, allegedly by a former employee of the same resort.
The victim, identified by India’s Express News Service as 24 year-old Ramakrishnan Sadanandan from Thiruvananthapuram, was reportedly attacked at 2:30pm on March 31 while staying in a local guest house.
According to the victim, he was attacked and robbed of US$200.
“They forcibly entered my room holding an identity card, pushed me to the bed and started beating me with a hammer,” Sadanandan told the Express News Service.
“They took my mobile phone, cash worth US$200, camera and gold chain, and ran away. I informed the hotel authorities about the incident and they called the police,” he said.
Sadanandan, who works as a front office supervisor at Medhufushi Island Resort and Spa, said that the police had “only registered the complaint”. He has also filed the complaint at the Indian High Commission in the Maldives.
Speaking to Minivan News, Sadanandan said that he had been continuously threatened in the last two days and warned that he would not be allowed to leave the country safely.
However Sadanandan said that he is planning to leave the country as soon as possible and if required he would seek the assistance of the Maldives Police Service.
A person familiar with the matter told Minivan News under condition of anonymity that Sadanandan and the person who had attacked him both had worked on the resort. Sadanandan was the senior officer to the person who had attacked him.
According to the source, Sadanandan was warned prior to the attack, and “was lucky that he was at a hotel or else the he would have ended up in huge trouble”. The source also said that Sadanandan had audio recordings of the attacker in which he had been threatened.
A police media official confirmed to Minivan News that the case had been lodged with police and that efforts were underway to arrest the people involved in the crime.
Speaking to Minivan News, First Secretary of the Indian High Commission in the Maldives, S.C Agarwal, said “I think the Maldivian society needs to be a little bit more sensitive to the foreigners.”
“Foreigners come here because they are invited to come here by the Maldivian community. They are issued with visas and work permits. If they are being mistreated, in the long term it will bring long term consequences to the country,” he said.
Agarwal added that foreigners deserved to have their rights and liberties respected once they entered the country with valid documents.
Regarding the case of Sadanandan, Agarwal confirmed that the High Commission had received the complaint on day the event took place.
Agarwal also said that a similar incident occurred about 10 to 15 days ago, in which an Indian woman was mugged on the street and had her mobile phone stolen. However, he said that the police had arrested the perpetrators on the same day and the mobile phone was retrieved. However she had declined to proceed with the case because she did not think she would succeed as a foreigner.
Despite the reluctance of foreigners to report such crimes, the Indian High Commission had received more than 400 complaints in the last five months. Most related to labour issues, but some included mugging and robberies affecting the Indian community.
“In my last five months in working in the High Commission, I have received about 400 complaints from the Indian community here. And that is not good,” Agarwal said.
The Indian High Commission had advised Indian nationals not to carry large sums of money in their pockets, and to take precautionary measures at all times, he added.
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