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Thursday 21 Aug 2025
LOCAL EDITION
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LOCAL EDITION
Combined photos of (from L-R) Mohamed Wisam, 23; Ahmed Faris, 28; and Ahmed Ashid, 28. (Photo/MV Crisis)
The police on early Thursday arrested three young men in connection to the killing of an elderly man from AA. Maalhos, who died in July following a brutal attack as he slept in his home.
Abdul Rahman Adam, 65, Orchidmaage in AA. Maalhos, was rushed to the local health center at around 01:50 am on July 13 after he was found bleeding in his bedroom. According to the police, he was inflicted “serious injuries” while he was sleeping in his home, and died a couple of hours later at the local health center.
An autopsy confirmed he died from injuries to his head.
On Thursday, over a month since Abdul Rahman’s murder, a police spokesperson announced the arrest of three suspects in connection to the case.
While the police have yet to disclose their identities, a credible source confirmed to Sun that all three are locals. They are:
But the arrest of these three young men in the murder has created shockwaves across Maalhos, including from the victim’s family themselves.
A source from Abdul Rahman’s family told Sun on Thursday morning that they learnt of the arrests from media reports, and that they have yet to be officially told by the police.
The family said that the three suspects arrested in the case have no known grievance against Abdul Rahman, but were in fact friendly towards him and the rest of the family.
Another source told Sun that all three suspects hold respectable government jobs; Wisam works in his home island as a youth associate – a presidential political appointee role, while Faris works at the State Electric Company (STELCO) branch in Maalhos, and Ashid at the Road Development Corporation (RDC) headquarters in Male’.
While Wisam and Faris were arrested from Maalhos by a team of police officers who arrived in the island at around 02:30 am on Thursday, Ashid was arrested from Male’, where he lives.
However, all three had reportedly been in Maalhos at the time of the murder.
“They always hang out together. But there’s no history of them committing any crime,” said a local.
Abdul Rahman was labelled in Maalhos as a “black magician”.
A local source who spoke to Sun confirmed the rumor is widespread in Maalhos, but stressed that he himself only heard the rumor and does not know this for a fact.
These allegations are also denied by Abdul Rahman’s family.
Abdul Rahman and his wife Nazima Ibrahim, a council assistant at the Maalhos Council, had been living alone at the time of the murder. The couple have three children, two of whom reside in other islands. Meanwhile the third, an ambulance driver for the Maalhos Health Center, had been away in Male’ at the time of the murder.
Abdul Rahman was a fisherman, and was often away from home working on fishing boats from other islands.
His son, Ahmed Nimal told Sun that that his parents slept in separate rooms on Saturday night. His mother woke up from her sleep to the sound of someone running out of the house.
She looked out of her bedroom to find the main door to the house ajar.
“She went into my father’s room and found so much blood,” said a distraught Nimal.
Nimal told Sun that the house has two doors, one of which is usually left unlocked.
Nimal said that he cannot think of anyone who could have committed such a horrific act, neither can he think of anyone who harbored resentment or any ill will towards his father.
This feeling of bewilderment is echoed by local residents, who report that Abdul Raheem and his family lived a simple life, and cannot think of anyone who had a grudge against him or any possible motivation for his murder.
The arrest of the three young men in the case deepens the feeling of bewilderment in the island.
