A game of hide and seek turned into a missing persons case in Bangladesh when a 15-year-old boy disappeared while playing with his friends. The boy was discovered almost a week later in a different country.
The teenage boy, who was later identified by authorities as Fahim, was playing hide and seek with his friends when he decided that a shipping container was a good place to hide.
Unknown to him, the container was about to be shipped off to a different country. Fahim reportedly fell asleep inside the container, which was later packed on a ship and sent off to Malaysia.
The shipping container left the port city of Chittagong on Wednesday, January 11, and arrived in Port Klang, Malaysia, on Tuesday, January 17. For the six days he was stuck inside the container, Fahim was without food or water.
He was eventually freed from the container when the staff at Port Klang heard a knocking coming from the container. They were shocked to see the boy, who was emaciated and confused, stepping out of the container.
There was a huge communication barrier as the boy did not speak or understand the local language.
Officers from the Marine Police Force, the District Health Department in Klang, and the Malaysian Immigration Department responded to calls from port authorities about the boy.
Footage of the visibly fatigued boy emerging from the container was shared on social media.
Authorities initially suspected that Fahim was a victim of human trafficking but soon discovered that was not the case. Police took him to a nearby hospital for treatment.
Malaysia’s Home Minister, Datuk Seri Nasution, released a statement about the incident, saying that authorities found the boy inside a container that arrived on a ship at the port.
It is not the first case of a teenager mistakenly entering a shipping container and finding themselves thousands of miles away.
In October 2022, Malaysian authorities discovered a 15-year-old’s decomposing body in a shipping container from Chittagong to Penang Port, Malaysia.
