Late Sudirman’s home destroyed in blaze

Source:Star Online, 4/12/2008

TEMERLOH: The home of popular entertainer, the late Sudirman Arshad, at Kampung Bukit Tok Embun, Mentakab, near here was destroyed in a fire at about 4am yesterday.

Mentakab Fire and Rescue station chief Asst Supt Md Yusof Mustafa said the fire is believed to have been started by a lit candle left by drug addicts who had been using the empty house as their haunt.

A forensics team from the Fire and Rescue Department was investigating the real cause of the fire as well as losses incurred.

ASP Md Yusof said the station was informed that an electric pole 15m from the house was on fire, but on arrival at the scene, saw the house was also gutted.

“When firemen got there, about 90% of the house had been gutted,” he told reporters here yesterday.

Meanwhile, a neighbour, Ramlah Daud, 43, said she realised the house was on fire when she woke up to check on an explosion she heard at about 4am.

“I saw sparks from the fire hitting an electric pole nearby and contacted the Fire and Rescue station for fear that the fire would also spread to my house and a few other houses nearby,” she said.

Sudirman’s brother-in-law, Ahmad Nizam Hamid, said he had found some drug-taking paraphernalia like tin foil and needles there.

“I had lodged police reports when the grilles and the roofing of the house went missing,” he added.

He said Sudirman was born at a house at Jalan Ibrahim in Temerloh, but later moved to the house at Kampung Bukit Tok Embun, where he grew up and completed his secondary school before studying law at Universiti Malaya. — Bernama