16 months later, police make arrests over suspicious death

The Maldives police have arrested five people over the death of a young man some 16 months ago. At the time, the police had labelled Mohamed Nadhaal’s death an accident.

Nadhaal, 25 years, had reportedly fallen from the sixth floor of a building in Malé in December 2014. Police had said then they found no evidence to suggest he was thrown off the balcony, and said he had tested positive for cannabis.

The arrest of four young men, aged 21, 22, 24 and 15 years, and a woman aged 24 years on Saturday and Sunday were based on new evidence, a police spokesman suggested.

“The arrests were made based on information about Nadhal’s death, that were sufficient enough as evidence to make these arrests,” he said.

When asked if the police considered Nadhal’s death to be a murder, he said: “We cannot comment on that at this stage.”

The five have been remanded for 15 days.

Nadhaal’s father Ibrahim ‘Bro’ Rasheed Moosa had claimed his son was murdered days after his death.

“For the past year, day and night, I have been trying to find out the truth about my son’s murder,” Moosa said. “I did my own investigation, and compiled a report that I submitted to the police and the Prosecutor General’s Office last February.”

Nadhal’s body was found 17 feet away from the building he fell from, Moosa said. “That was the first thing that made me suspicious. There is no way he could have jumped that far. Even if he had slipped and fallen, his body would have landed just a few feet away.”

The young man had fallen from the fifth or sixth floor of Beyrumatheege in the Machangoalhi ward.

Moosa also claimed two cracks had been found on his son’s skull. Nadhaal’s back was also bruised. Eyewitnesses meanwhile said they had heard no shouts except for the sound of the body hitting the pavement, and said they did not find a pulse despite checking immediately, he said.

Eye witnesses also found Nadhal’s phone in his back pocket with blood in its display, Moosa claimed, questioning how the blood could have seeped inside the phone within a short period of time.

Believing the police to be negligent in investigating his son’s murder, Moosa had lodged complaints at the Human Rights Commission of the Maldives and the then-Police Integrity Commission, now National Integrity Commission, in January 2015.

Moosa said he has also shared names of suspects involved in the case.