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Family of deceased detainee urge CJ to probe serial remand

The family of S Tharma Rajen, who died in police custody last week, submitted a letter of appeal to Chief Justice Mohamed Dzaiddin Abdullah today urging him to investigate magistrates allowing 'serial' remand.

"We understand that the Magistrates Courts in Kuala Lumpur and in Putrajaya have given remand orders consecutively in this instance exceeding 14 days and overstepping the boundaries of Section 117 of the Criminal Procedure Code.

"We call upon yourself to study these instances of 'serial remand' and that you do us justice in this matter," said the letter.

"We would also like to bring to your attention that Section 117 has been abused and the police have gone beyond the maximum 14 days by obtaining another remand order from another magistrate," the letter added.

Section 117 allows the police to remand a suspect for not more than 14 days upon approval of a magistrate 24 hours after his or her arrest.

The letter was handed to the chief justice's special officer Sabirin Jaafar by the family's lawyer P Uthayakumar at the Federal Court building in Kuala Lumpur.

Coroners inquest

The family also appealed to Dzaiddin to carry out a coroners inquest since Hospital Putrajaya, where the 20-year-old waiter had died on June 21, has not been able to furnish a postmortem report.

However, the family conducted an independent postmortem which revealed yesterday that he had died from tuberculosis.

Tharma Rajen, who hailed from Kuala Lumpur, was arrested in early April over suspicion of gangsterism.

He was first held at the Kuala Lumpur police headquarters and later remanded at the Brickfields and Cheras district police headquarters respectively before being slapped with a 60-day detention order under the Emergency Ordinance 1960.

His family claimed that the suspect was assaulted in custody and was denied prompt medical treatment. The police have refuted these charges and said that according to the postmortem report, the cause of death was pneumonia.

However the family has yet to be given a copy of this report.

Since Tuesday, the family has also been waiting for Kuala Lumpur High Court judge Mohd Ghazali Mohd Yusoff to make a judicial review on Kajang Magistrate Azahaniz The's refusal to let them have the report.

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