Indian tortured to death in Malaysia

Kuala Lumpur: An Indian worker has died in Malaysia after being beaten and starved for eight months in one of the most harrowing cases of migrant worker abuse in years, a newspaper said on Saturday.

R Ganesh, 28, from Tamil Nadu, died on Friday in a hospital in northern Kedah state, three days after a group of villagers found him lying in bushes in a secluded jungle and rescued him, the New Straits Times said.

A sauce factory owner, his wife and their adult son were detained on Tuesday on suspicion of voluntarily causing grievous hurt to Ganesh, but police have reclassified the case as murder following his death, the newspaper said.

Police have said Ganesh was allegedly beaten up by his employer and family in their factory in neighboring Penang state, had hot water poured over him and was chained up without food for 20 days before being dumped in Kedah.

The Malaysian factory owner and his family may be charged with murder for Ganesh's death.

Police in Penang could not be reached for comments.

An emaciated Ganesh told the newspaper earlier this week that he was ordered to work for 16 hours each day, and had been starved and abused by the family for the past eight months.

''They hit me with sticks, rubber hose and iron rod. I was also deprived of food and water. They chained my hands and legs before locking me up in a dark room in their house every night,'' he said in the report.

He said he thought his employer was going to kill him when he was bundled into a car on Monday night and driven to the jungle in Kedah.

The New Straits Times said that the three suspects had previously been accused of abusing their Indonesian maid by pouring hot water on her. But the case was settled after they allegedly paid off the maid and sent her home, it said.

Malaysia employs some 1.8 million registered foreign workers from various countries, and there have been occasional cases of mistreatment.

Rights groups have complained that migrant workers, mostly Indonesians, do not receive adequate protection from abusive employers because of insufficient laws governing employer conduct in Malaysia, a wealthy Southeast Asian nation of 26 million.