Shadowing Practice: They Said His Phone ‘Exploded’… But There Was a Hole in His Head | Cradle Fund CEO Murder - Learn English Speaking with YouTube
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A firefighter is forced to open a bedroom door.
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A firefighter is forced to open a bedroom door.
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It's been locked from the outside.
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Inside, a man is lying dead on the bed.
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Burn marks cover parts of his body,
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and the damage is concentrated near the bed frame and around his head.
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But the rest of the room is almost completely untouched.
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Papers are still on the desk.
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The curtains are intact.
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It's the eve of Hari Raya Idyulfi tree,
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the holiday marking the end of Ramadan.
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Across Malaysia, families are getting ready to celebrate.
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But in this home, Nazrin Hassan's family won't be celebrating.
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They will be planning a funeral.
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This is the case of Nazrin Hassan,
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one of the most talked about cases in Malaysia's recent history.
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And I have to say,
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this one raises more questions than it answers.
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It's the early hours of June 14th, 2018.
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In an affluent neighborhood in Petalingjaya,
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Malaysia, a security guard notices something wrong.
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Smoke is rising from a two-story house.
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He walks closer and finds the homeowner's wife,
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Samira Muzaffar, standing on the porch.
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She isn't on the phone.
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She isn't calling for help.
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She isn't doing anything.
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For some reason, none of the members of the household called the emergency services.
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It was the neighbors who reached out for help.
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The firefighters arrive to find Samira still standing at the front door.
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She is completely expressionless.
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No crying, no wailing, even as her husband is burning in the room above her.
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There is no emotion at all.
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The firefighters rush upstairs.
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Inside the bedroom, they find Nasrin Hassan's body on the bed,
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with burn marks covering roughly 30% of his body.
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The room is partially burned,
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but the pattern doesn't look like that of an accidental fire.
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The damage is concentrated in specific areas,
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rather than spreading evenly across the room.
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Flammable items elsewhere are completely untouched.
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And another questionable detail is that Nazarene's body is just lying on the bed.
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There was no sign that he tried to escape,
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no sign that he tried to move at all.
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It was a very strange scene.
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What on earth had happened in this room?
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To understand why this case would go on to grip an entire nation,
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let's first look into who Nazarene Hassan was.
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He was the group CEO of Kradl Fund,
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a government-linked agency under Malaysia's Ministry of Finance.
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Kradl provided grant funding to early-stage technology startups,
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and over the years, it backed hundreds of companies,
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including a ride-hailing startup that would eventually become Grab.
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within Malaysia's tech community Nasrin was seen as something rare a leading figure who genuinely understood entrepreneurship
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because he had actually lived it before running Cradle he had
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been a startup founder himself people who worked with him described him as articulate thoughtful
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and direct he believed that entrepreneurs weren't just building businesses they were trying to create something that mattered.
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He once said that Cradle's job was simply to help as many founders as possible reach commercial success,
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and that what they did with it after that was up to them.
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When people showed up for his funeral on June 15th,
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2018, the turnout said everything.
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It was the kind of crowd you would expect for a head of state,
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not someone working behind the scenes at a grant agency.
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For many people in Malaysia's startup world,
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Cradle had been the only institution that ever believed their idea.
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And Nasrin had been the person behind that.
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For those who had questions about his death,
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his family and Cradle Fund had answers.
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Both groups stated that Nasrin had gone to sleep after taking medication for a migraine,
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migraine, and that while he slept,
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the Blackberry phone charging behind his bed had exploded.
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The autopsy carried out at Kuala Lumpur Hospital appeared to support this.
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It concluded that his death was caused by complications from a blast and blunt penetrating injuries,
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consistent with a phone explosion.
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A tragic accident, case closed.
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Except 10 days after Nazrin had been laid to rest, everything changed.
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On June 25th, a forensic report from the Fire and Rescue Department came back,
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and its findings didn't match the official story at all.
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The department found traces of petrol on Nazrin's body,
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on the bed frame, on the mattress, and on his phone.
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In light of these findings,
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the state's Fire and Rescue Department director said it was far too early to conclude that the phone had caused the fire.
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Then on August 6, 2018,
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the police made it official.
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The case was reclassified.
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Nasrin Hassan's death was no longer considered an accident.
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It was murder.
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Rather than waiting for the authorities to act,
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Nasrin's siblings began pushing for answers themselves.
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His older brother, Dr. Melek Hassan,
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was the first to publicly question the autopsy results.
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Another brother, Dr. Abdulaziz Hassan,
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was a lawyer and helped coordinate the family's efforts.
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And their sister, Chey Eleni Chey Hassan,
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obtained the death certificate and compared it to the fire and rescue department's findings.
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And things weren't adding up.
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She made a formal request to the court for the right to exhume Nasrin's body for a second autopsy.
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On October 1st, 2018, the Magistrates' Court granted police permission to do exactly that.
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But Nasrin's widow, Samira, was opposed to this,
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and her lawyers challenged the decision.
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But the High Court upheld the initial ruling.
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Nasrin's body was exhumed on October 8th and transported to the University of Malaya Medical Center for a second autopsy.
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And here they uncovered something that the first one had not.
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Nasrin had not died from an exploding phone.
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He had died from multiple blunt impacts to the head.
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On March 12, 2019, four people were formally charged with Nasrin's murder.
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The first was his widow, Samira Muzaffar.
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The second and third were her two teenage sons from a previous marriage,
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then aged 17 and 14.
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And the fourth was Ekka Waiu Lestari,
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an Indonesian domestic helper employed by the family.
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For some reason that has never been made clear,
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Ekka was charged, but never actually arrested,
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so she was absent for all court proceedings.
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They were accused of killing Nazrin at his home sometime between 11.30 pm on June 13th and 4 a.m on June 14th.
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The charge was murder, but it was brought jointly against all of them.
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This meant the prosecution had to prove not only that they had murdered Nasrin,
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but that they had acted together with the shared intention to kill him.
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In Malaysia, murder carries a mandatory death sentence upon conviction,
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though that doesn't apply to anyone who was a minor at the time of the offense.
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The teenagers were safe, but Samira's life was on the line.
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The trial began on September 6,
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2019, before the High Court in Shah Alam.
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All three who appeared in court pleaded not guilty.
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The courtroom was packed.
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Nasrin had been a prominent figure,
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and Samira was by no means unknown.
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She was a senior executive at the Malaysian Intellectual Property Corporation,
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and her father was Chandra Muzaffar,
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one of Malaysia's most prominent political scientists and human rights figures.
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Her father sat in the public gallery to support her.
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These were not people on the margins of society.
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They were educated, well-connected, and high profile.
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Exactly the type of people to draw public attention.
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And the case itself was compelling.
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The prosecution wasn't just suggesting the fire had been set deliberately.
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They were saying Nasrin may have already been dead before the fire even started.
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Blood spatter found on the wall of the burned room matched Nasrin's DNA.
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A National Police Forensic Officer testified that the pattern was consistent with blunt force trauma,
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not a blast, and that it must have occurred before the fire,
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because the evidence of this was found beneath the suit.
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The prosecution argued that Nazrin had been struck in the head with something consistent with a hammer,
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and that the fire had had been set deliberately in targeted areas to destroy the evidence.
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But there was another forensic detail that raised even more questions.
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A prosecution forensic witness testified that Nasrin had a penetrating wound track in his brain,
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measuring 6.8 centimeters deep and 0.4 centimeters in diameter.
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So to put that in perspective,
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that's a wound track into the brain that's about the length
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of a dollar bill through a channel half the width of a pencil.
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A separate penetrating wound was also found on the front of his neck.
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How had he suffered so many different injuries?
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Before the trial, investigators had looked into whether these wounds could have been caused by something other than a blunt weapon.
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In September 2018, sources told local media
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that one of Samira's teenage sons had been brought in for questioning in connection with a neck injury.
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It's suggested that the wound may have been caused by an arrow,
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and both boys were members of their school archery club.
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These details were never formally established in court.
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No findings were ever made linking any specific injury to a particular weapon or person.
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These remain allegations.
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But there were other things found at the scene that raised their own questions.
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When a forensic officer visited the house in September 2018,
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three months after the incident,
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he found three fragments in the compound consistent with arrow components.
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And inside the house, in a storeroom,
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he found a CCTV recorder.
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It hadn't been switched off.
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It had been completely disconnected from its wiring and removed from sight.
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So whatever happened in that house between 11.30 p.m and 4 a.m.
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went undocumented.
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A firefighter also testified that on the morning of June 14th,
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the day Nasrin's body was discovered,
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he saw one of the teenagers leaving the house with a box.
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What was inside has never been discovered.
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But what could their motive have been?
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As the trial progressed, the prosecution called a series of witnesses to build a picture of the household.
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As a family unit, Samira and Nasrin had one son together,
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and both had children from previous marriages.
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From the outside, it looked like a stable, successful household.
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Nasrin's personal assistant called this into question,
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testifying that Nasrin's work performance had declined after the marriage.
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A colleague described moments where Nasrin seemed unsettled after phone calls with his wife.
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Instead, he had spoken about her spending,
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and at times had mentioned considering a divorce.
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The marriage may not have been as happy as it once seemed.
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There were also reports that Nasrin had received threatening phone calls,
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which he later discovered had come from one of Samira's children.
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The court also heard that Nasrin's clothing had been deliberately damaged by that same child.
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The defense pushed back on the prosecution's portrayal of a fractured family.
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Nasrin's driver testified that family outings in the months before his death seemed completely normal,
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nothing out of the ordinary.
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In addition, text messages from Samira's phone in the days before the incident
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were later described by one of the judges as normal,
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intimate exchanges between a husband and wife.
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The prosecution's main problem was that their case rested entirely on circumstantial evidence.
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They argued that Samira and the two teenagers were the last people seen with Nasrin before his death.
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And Samira had entered Nasrin's room about three hours before the fire broke out.
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She was later seen standing on the porch as smoke rose from the house,
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making no attempt to call for help and showing no emotion.
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And they said the fire had been set deliberately in specific areas to destroy evidence.
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The defense dismantled each piece individually.
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They pointed out that the chemistry department had found no traces of petrol on the walls,
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directly contradicting the fire and rescue department's findings.
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They also raised serious concerns about how the scene had been handled.
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Because the death was initially ruled an accident,
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the house had never been treated as a crime scene.
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It had been cleaned.
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People had continued living in it.
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The arrow fragments and the disconnected TV recorder weren't found until three months after Nazrin's death.
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The blood spatter wasn't discovered until five months after the incident.
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The defense argued that, given all of this,
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the reliability of the evidence collected from the site simply couldn't be guaranteed.
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And then there was Ekawahi Lestari, the family's domestic helper.
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She had been in the house on the night Nasrin died.
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She had been charged, and yet she had never been arrested.
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She wasn't hard to find.
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She was living in another city,
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working in a coffee shop,
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and yet she was never brought before the court to answer a single question about what she might have seen.
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On June 21st, 2022, the High Court acquitted all three defendants without requiring them to present a defense.
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By that point, the two teenagers were 20 and 17.
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The judges found that the prosecution had failed to present even the minimum evidence required to proceed with the trial.
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There was simply nothing to show that any of the accused had caused Nasrin's death.
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Outside the courtroom, Nasrin's brother,
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Dr. Abdulaziz Hassan, told reporters the family still had unanswered questions and hoped the prosecution would appeal.
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His sister, Cheyelini Cheyassan, was direct.
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The family wasn't trying to send anyone to the gallows.
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They just wanted the truth.
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The prosecution did appeal.
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They raised the additional question of the door to Nasrin's room being locked from the outside.
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However, they still didn't have enough.
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On February 8th, 2024, the Court of Appeal dismissed the appeal.
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There was no proof of a common intention among the three accused.
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The Petro evidence was rejected outright,
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given its direct contradiction by the chemistry department.
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And the court noted, again,
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that another person charged with Nazrin's murder had been living openly within the country.
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and that nobody had ever gone to get her.
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The prosecution appealed one final time to the federal court,
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the highest court in Malaysia.
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On January 7th, 2026, the three judges unanimously dismissed the appeal.
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They too found the evidence to be insufficient.
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And so, Samira Muzaffar and her two sons are,
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in the eyes of the law, completely innocent.
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All three were acquitted at every level of Malaysia's court system.
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Ekawayu Lestari remains at large.
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Nobody has been convicted of Nasrin Hassan's murder.
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After the federal court's decision,
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Nasrin's brother, Dr. Malek Hassan, spoke to reporters.
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Our feelings are mixed, he said.
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My sister is deeply saddened because they were very close.
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She only wants to know what actually happened.
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not who is to blame.
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And we really don't know what happened.
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There were so many different findings from different sources that it's truly impossible to discern.
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A localized fire, traces of petrol,
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a foam explosion, blood spatter,
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blunt force trauma to the head,
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a deep injury to the brain,
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arrow fragments, a door locked from the outside,
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and a wife who decided for whatever reason not to call for help.
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All we know for sure is this.
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Nasrin Hassan went home on the last evening of Ramadan.
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There was a fire in his room,
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and by morning, his family was preparing for his burial.
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We can only hope that in the future his family members get the answers they need.
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That is all for today.
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Thank you for watching.
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Context & Background
The recent tragic incident involving Nazrin Hassan, the CEO of Cradle Fund, has captivated Malaysia and raised numerous questions about circumstances surrounding his death. As reported, the event unfolded on June 14th, 2018, in an affluent neighborhood in Petalingjaya, where firefighters discovered his body under strange circumstances. Nazrin's position as a prominent figure in the Malaysian tech industry adds layers to the complexity of the case, making it not only a local story but one that has implications reaching beyond Malaysia.
The peculiar details, such as the lack of emergency calls from family members and the specific burn patterns in the bedroom, have left many in disbelief. This case serves as an important point of reference for learners of English, especially in understanding narrative development, the construction of suspense, and the use of vivid descriptions in storytelling.
Top 5 Phrases for Daily Communication
- “What on earth had happened?” - A common expression indicating confusion or shock.
- “There was no sign that he tried to escape.” - Useful for discussing situations where someone appears passive or resigned.
- “A security guard notices something wrong.” - A great way to express awareness of unusual situations.
- “The damage is concentrated in specific areas.” - Useful in conversations about problems that are localized rather than widespread.
- “This raises more questions than it answers.” - This phrase is ideal for discussions that provoke curiosity or ambiguity.
Step-by-Step Shadowing Guide
To improve your English proficiency through the narrative shared in this case, you can apply the shadowing technique effectively. Follow these steps to enhance your speaking skills:
- Watch and Listen: Begin by watching the video and listening closely to the delivery of the phrases. Take note of the pronunciation and intonation.
- Break It Down: Divide the transcript into manageable segments. Focus on a short phrase at a time; for instance, “What on earth had happened?”
- Repeat Aloud: Mimic the speaker's tone and pace. The goal here is to match the rhythm and inflection as closely as possible—a technique often used in shadowspeak.
- Record Yourself: Use a voice recording tool to capture your attempts. Play it back to compare with the original video, paying attention to areas for improvement.
- Practice Regularly: Utilize this shadowing site to create a routine where you practice consistently. Engaging with varied content will boost your confidence in real-life conversations.
By embracing these practices and phrases, you’re well on your way to mastering English. Remember, with tools like learn English with YouTube and shadowspeaks, the journey to fluency can be both engaging and effective!
What is the Shadowing Technique?
Shadowing is a science-backed language learning technique originally developed for professional interpreter training and popularized by polyglot Dr. Alexander Arguelles. The method is simple but powerful: you listen to native English audio and immediately repeat it out loud — like a shadow following the speaker with just a 1–2 second delay. Unlike passive listening or grammar drills, shadowing forces your brain and mouth muscles to simultaneously process and reproduce real speech patterns. Research shows it significantly improves pronunciation accuracy, intonation, rhythm, connected speech, listening comprehension, and speaking fluency — making it one of the most effective methods for IELTS Speaking preparation and real-world English communication.
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