The Malay Mail Online – 18 hours agoRELATED CONTENT
- Soosalu poses at a car show. Her remains will now be flown back to Estonia. — file …
PETALING JAYA, July 22 — The family of freelance Estonian model Regina Soosalu does not want fundraising for her funeral after her boyfriend’s family agreed to bear all expenses.
The model’s brother, Silver, said Tunku Alang Reza Tunku Ibrahim’s family would make all arrangements, including flying her remains back to Estonia.
Silver told Malay Mail yesterday: “Yes, Alang’s family is helping us, we don’t need the donation now.”
Earlier, Soosalu’s family said that because of their financial difficulties, her body would be cremated in Malaysia after receiving the green light from the police to claim her body.
They were struggling to raise money as a foreign airline had quoted RM120,000 to fly the 30-year-old’s body home.
Friends and well-wishers of Soosalu had earlier also rallied to raise funds to fly Soosalu’s family down and cover all expenses related to her death.
Soosalu’s death remains a mystery. Her body was found on July 1 on Rawa Island where she spent most of her time with her boyfriend, Tunku Alang.
Police initially investigated her death as drowning but reclassified the case as murder when they found scratches and bruises on her body.
Her boyfriend was among 11 suspects arrested in connection to her case.
Five suspects — a bartender, two boatmen, a resort manager and a friend of Tunku Alang who was on the island during the incident — were released after investigations.
However, Soosalu’s boyfriend, three of his friends and a couple are still under police custody.
Their remand order is supposed to end yesterday. However, it cannot be confirmed if they have been released as efforts to contact Johor CID chief SAC Datuk Hashnan Hassan were unsuccessful.
Earlier, Hashnan said police were still waiting for the toxicology report to determine if Soosalu was under the influence of drugs before her death.
Soosalu and Tunku Alang were detained for a drug case in Johor in January and were allegedly found in possession of ganja. The case was brought to court on May 21 but the couple were released on court bail.
This is not the first time that Rawa Island had been in the news.
On May 9, 2012, four Singapore-based expatriates alleged they were attacked by bodyguards of the Johor royal family.
In 2005, it was reported that a group of six men, including a Johor prince, gatecrashed a Brazilian couple’s wedding on the island and attacked guests with golf clubs and sharp objects.
Police detained four men, including the prince, then in his 20s, but freed them on bail days later.
The privately-owned island is 16km off the east coast of the peninsula and is an hour’s boat ride from Mersing. It is home to two resorts — Le Club and The Safari.
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