GEORGE TOWN, Sept 24 — Police said today that the crime ring discovered selling MyKad and birth certificates to foreigners in Penang may also be operating in other states.

Penang Police Chief Datuk T. Narenasagaran said investigators are exploring this possibility as part of their probe into the syndicate.

He also said the group allegedly involving senior officers in the National Registration Department (NRD) was not a new development.

“It has been in operations for quite some time as we found that the syndicate operated in several levels within the NRD,” he said in a brief press conference after officiating an International Security Seminar here today.

He said the police were continuing to investigations in order to discover as many of those involved as possible.

Two weeks ago, six people including an assistant director from Penang NRD were charged with 32 counts of selling illegally issued MyKad and Malaysian birth certificates to foreigners.

The ring was discovered by an Immigration officer who caught an apparent foreigner applying for a passport using a MyKad but was unable to converse in Malay.

Separately, Narenasagaran warned the public not to speculate about the case of a factory worker who was shot dead after running amok in the warehouse of the factory in Bayan Lepas yesterday.

He said the police are still investigating what caused the 25-year-old man two slash two colleagues with a parang, including one who sustained fatal wounds, before police shot him dead at the scene.

“We are recording statements from his family, housemates and other colleagues so the public must not spread any speculations or rumours about the incident as it may hamper our investigations,” he said.

In the 4.45pm incident yesterday Narenasagaran said the man had attacked a 48-year-old supervisor in the factory by hacking at her head repeatedly with a parang the moment he entered the premises.

The factory security director who heard the commotion went to the site to help the woman but he too was slashed.

The suspect was shot dead after he ran towards the police while brandishing two parangs at them.

The supervisor succumbed to her injuries at about 8pm last night while the security director is warded at a private hospital.