The 70-year-old man living in a remote farm house in the semi-rural area near Kuching raped his three teenage daughters for a few years. Two of the girls gave birth to a baby each, and the father was alleged to have killed and buried them in the backyard.

The whole ugly thing came to light when the third daughter became pregnant and was sent to the Sarawak General Hospital. She thought it was just a bad case of stomach flu. She had become intellectually impaired by then.

The old man was taken into police custody. A year later, the case went to court, and the case was thrown out, partly because the culprit's confession was not voluntarily given to the police. For the uninitiated, that means he was beaten by the interrogating officers into confessing his crimes.

Again the question arises: is it a standard though unofficial practice for policemen to torture prisoners under remand, or is it just the misdeeds of a few rogue officers who abuse their powers of detention?