‘I know he is gone. I am resigned to the fact that he is dead. I have lost hope.’
— Suhaili Sahi (pic), mother of Mohd Ikhwan Mohd Ridhuan. The boy and Muhammad Aiman Kamarul remain missing.
SUHAILI Sahi’s strong motherly instincts tell her she will never see her son alive again. Her son, Mohd Ikhwan Mohd Ridhuan, 10, was swept away by gushing waters in a fishing incident in Kampung Timah SKC on Friday evening.
Though Bukit Beruntung tahfiz students and villagers had performed solat hajat to pray for Ikhwan’s safe return, Suhaili, a mother of six, said she only wanted the body of her second child to be found.
“I know he is gone. I know he is gone. I am not hoping for him to come back alive. I am resigned to the fact that he is dead. I have lost hope. I just want his body to surface so that our family can have closure and bury him,” she told the New Sunday Times yesterday.
Earlier, Suhaili performed a prayer at the tributary — Sungai SKC — where Ikhwan was believed to have been washed away by strong current.
Kamarul Ariffin Osman, the father of Muhammad Aiman Kamarul, another missing boy, also participated in the prayer, which was carried out after a half-hour rain at 4pm.
Suhaili said Ikhwan was a fishing and football enthusiast who often played with the same group of boys who were also swept away.
She said before Ikhwan went out with his friends, he had asked for his favourite nasi goreng while he changed.
“I called for him after I finished cooking. I looked for him in the house before I realised he had gone out.
“I later found out he had gone fishing. My daughter, Nur Anis Natasha, broke the bad news to me. I’m sad that he didn’t get to eat the nasi goreng,” said Suhaili.
Nur Anis Natasha, 12, said when Ikhwan celebrated his birthday on March 15, he had asked for a cake from Suhaili.
“My mother told him she would buy him a cake when our father gets his salary on March 25. He got very upset and refused to eat his dinner the night before the incident.”
Nur Anis Natasha was taking care of another brother at the search-and-rescue operations’ command centre while Suhaili and her husband, Mohd Ridhuan Abdullah, 38, were briefed on the progress of the mission for the two boys.
Meanwhile, there was a case of mistaken identity of one of the five bodies recovered from the tributary.
The body of Mohd Shah Iskandar Abdullah, 11, was earlier mistaken for Ikhwan when it was found at 9.47pm on Friday.
Suhaili, who identified the body, said it was not Ikhwan’s as he had not been circumcised.
During the SAR operations yesterday, the team found a pair of track bottoms that was stuck on a branch, with keys and two RM1 notes in the pocket.
The track bottom was confirmed to belong to one of the five boys who drowned.
Out of the eight boys, only Muhammad Shahir Azman, 12, survived after grabbing on to a rubber hose. He was rescued by a Bangladeshi who heard his screams for help.
The five bodies that were recovered were brothers Shahrizwan Abdullah, 10, and Shahrizat Abdullah, 12; Amirul Hakimi Khairul Amru, 9; Mohd Aiman Fitri Md Asmadi, 12; and, Mohd Iskandar Shah Abdullah, 11.
Their bodies were retrieved between 6.50pm on Friday and 12.17am yesterday.