PETALING JAYA — The wife of the late Cradle Fund chief executive officer Nazrin Hassan, Samirah Muzaffar, and her two stepsons, have been charged with his murder. 

Samirah, 43, and her two sons, aged 15 and 17, were charged under Section 302 of the Penal Code, which is punishable by death, at the Magistrate’s Court in Petaling Jaya on March 4.

No plea was recorded.

Police arrested the three for Nazrin’s murder on the morning of March 4, after eight months of investigations.

Nazrin was found dead on the upper floor of his double-storey house in an affluent major township in Selangor, Mutiara Damansara, on June 14 last year, with burn marks on 30 per cent of his body. He was initially said to have died from injuries sustained when his mobile phone exploded.

Selangor Criminal Investigations Department chief SAC Fadzil Ahmat said the three were arrested at 6.45am from their home.

A police source told the Malay Mail that the family’s maid is also involved in the case, and efforts are underway to make an arrest. “We believe the maid is back in Indonesia,” the source said.

It was pathologists at Kuala Lumpur Hospital who initially concluded in Nazrin’s first post-mortem examination that injuries sustained from a mobile phone explosion was what killed him in June.

But last August, Malaysian police reclassified the case as murder, following a forensic investigation report by the Fire and Rescue Department, which cited suspected foul play in the death. The Malay Mail had reported that traces of petrol were found in the deceased’s room following a laboratory report by the department.

Following that, one of the sons was detained last September for questioning after a puncture wound was found on the deceased’s neck, which is believed to be from an arrow. Sources earlier told the Malay Mail that both boys were members of their school’s archery club.

Police then arrested their mother Samirah and her first husband but both were eventually released.

It was only on Feb 22 that the police submitted the report of the second autopsy to the Deputy Public Prosecutor, leading to the latest arrests.

Prior to her arrest, Samirah had criticised the authorities with regard to their investigation into her second husband’s death; she had said then that she and her family were being kept in the dark over the progress of the investigation. AGENCIES