Beaten up for throwing egg at noisy playground kids
Five men arrested after they allegedly beat up man at Tiong Bahru playground
He allegedly threw an egg at some children, narrowly missing a one-year-old girl, because he felt they were noisy.
Enraged, five men stormed to his home and dragged him to the playground before beating him up.
Now, four days after the alleged attack, Mr Muhammad Faruk, 30, remains warded in Singapore General Hospital (SGH).
The five attackers, aged 17 to 41, were arrested, but have since been released on bail. The incident happened on Sunday evening at a playground at the foot of Block 42 at Beo Crescent, in Tiong Bahru.
The mother of the one-year-old girl who was nearly hit by the egg told The New Paper yesterday that her daughter and five-year-old son were at the playground with her husband, 41, at about 8pm that day.
"My husband told me there were others with kids at the playground and they were just playing when the man (Mr Faruk) threw an egg from his fourth-storey window," said the 34-year-old sales assistant, who did not want to be identified.
"The egg landed right next to my daughter, who started crying loudly, and my husband shouted 'Who did that?'"
She heard the shout and came out of her seventh-storey flat to see what was happening. She later told her husband to ignore Mr Faruk.
But her husband allegedly did not heed her words, and confronted Mr Faruk at his flat with others who were at the playground.
According to Chinese evening daily Lianhe Wanbao, the group of men later allegedly made Mr Faruk walk down the stairs to the playground before beating him up.
Mr Faruk was found bloodied and bruised by his 26-year-old wife when she returned home from work that evening.
In a news release on Wednesday, the police said that Mr Faruk's wife made a police report at about 11.10pm on Sunday.
Four of the men were arrested at Beo Crescent within two hours of the report, while the fifth was arrested in Bukit Batok the next day, all for their suspected involvement in rioting.
It is unclear if the men had previously known each other.
According to the Wanbao report yesterday, Mr Faruk's wife said her husband had suffered facial fractures and other injuries on his limbs.
She added that he remains in a state of confusion, thinking he is at work one minute and at home the next. She said it was possible her husband had thrown eggs at the children as he often complained that they were noisy.
She said that her husband loved to drink, and had been drinking and idling the past two weeks at home after he lost his job.
But the wife of the 41-year-old man who was arrested said that regardless of the circumstances, her husband was still in the wrong.
"He shouldn't have attacked the man (Mr Faruk)," she said. "If he goes to jail, it's going to be hard to look after our six children alone."
Those convicted for rioting can be jailed up to seven years and be subject to caning.
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