Team effort: Search and rescue personnel getting ready to look for Sulaiman on Saturday. (Inset) Sulaiman’s wife Fatimah Entigu weeping inside their home at Kampung Melayu Roban on the day of the attack. — The Star 19.9.11KUCHING: The body of missing fisherman Sulaiman Abdullah, a victim of a crocodile attack at Sungai Sebelak, has been found.
A group, part of the village search team, found the victim’s body at around 8pm yesterday, about 3km upstream from the spot where he was attacked.
“The villagers found Sulaiman and his body was intact,” Saratok police chief DSP Lee Thai Lein told The Star last night.
He said the body was now at Saratok Hospital awaiting post mortem
Earlier, police said their priority was to look for the body.
DSP Lee confirmed that the search had been reclassified from rescue to retrieving the 66-year-old’s “corpse”.
“Police, Fire and Rescue Department personnel and members of the People’s Volunteer Corps (Rela) are going back upstream as we speak. Crocodiles are not close to the open sea.
“We are going up, where the water is muddy and black, that’s where the crocodiles like to be,” he said.
He added some villagers were also taking part, although officially they were not encouraged to.
“It is very sad news and we are doing our best to help those who are in need,” he said, when asked about the stormy weather that hit Saratok late Saturday night.
“The thunderstorm affected our search. It rained very heavily around midnight.
“The downpour also came around 9am (today). The wind was strong.”
Sulaiman, from Sibu and who came to Kampung Melayu Roban — about 150km from his home town — to become a fisherman, was attacked on Saturday at roughly 4.30am.
According to his son Endoi Sulaiman, 41, who was in a second boat, Sulaiman was dragged under by a crocodile swiftly and in near total darkness.
Endoi said his father was finishing up the early morning’s work, pulling a protective canvas over some 3kgs of fish and shrimps, when tragedy struck.
Villagers, who went on an unofficial search immediately after, claimed they saw Sulaiman in the mouth of a crocodile along Sebelak River around 9.30am. Villagers did not believe Sulaiman to be alive by then.
Under state laws, crocodiles are protected species. Rescuers do not have permission to shoot and kill unless they are under attack.
As a protected species, only the Sarawak Forestry Corporation (SFC) can lead a culling operation, and even then, only if there are recent reported cases of attacks.
SFC will lead the culling mission and it can also appoint personnel from relevant agencies to take part.
On Saturday, DSP Lee told The Star police would use “common sense” to retrieve the body.
Asked again yesterday whether they would shoot and kill, he gave the same “common sense” answer.
“That is all I can say. Our job now is to retrieve the body. We are not on a hunt, I want to make that very, very clear. That’s not what this is about,” DSP Lee said.
Sulaiman is believed to be the second Saratok resident to fall prey to crocodiles this year.
In May, Mankay Gohen, 42, from nearby Kampung Empelam was killed after he was also dragged into Sebelak River by a crocodile.
After Mankay’s death, a crocodile culling operation was launched, lasting a week, which resulted in the killing of just one crocodile. That operation was headed by the Saratok police chief.
The culling mission was controversial. Animal lovers and nature groups voiced their dissatisfaction with the operation.
This month, even SFC personnel, during a workshop for villagers near Niah, advocated “crocodile watching”, instead of crocodile culling.
The family of Sulaiman is urging authorities to restart culling. The victim’s son, Endoi, who is also a fisherman, said culling should be carried out periodically.
“I think they can do it once a week,” Endoi told reporters on the day of the attack, adding operations could not be on a daily basis.
“That (if operations were too frequent) would affect our fishing as well.”
