A SMS hoax brought scores of reporters to the late private investigator P Balasubramaniam's house yesterday for a "press conference" that wasn't.

Reporters and a police officer were eventually shooed off by Balasubramaniam's wife A Satamil Selvi, after they converged at her home in Rawang about 11am.

NONE The text message, which included Selvi's home address, said: “Please take note that A Satamil Selvi (widow of PI Bala) will make a police report that her late husband had been manipulated and paid by lawyers to sign the statutory declaration (SD)”.

Selvi told Malaysiakini when contacted today that she told the reporters that she did not send such a message, and the reporters left after lingering there for about 30 minutes.

She added that the police officer told her that his superior had ordered him to go to her house to receive her supposed police report.

“I told the police that I did not do any of this, and I don’t want anyone outside my home, be gone. So they all went off,” she said.

NONE She said she wants to take action against the pranksters but has yet to decide on her course of action because she wants to tend to her emotions first, following the loss of her husband.

Balasubramaniam ( left ) died of a heart attack on March 15, shortly after returning to Malaysia and vowing to bring justice to the murdered Mongolian national Altantuya Shaariibuu.

Better known as ‘PI Bala’, he filed a statutory declaration in 2008 implicating Prime Minister Najib Abdul Razak in the case of Altantuya's murder, only to recant it with a second declaration on the following day, after which he fled the country.

He had later asserted that the first statutory declaration was the truth, and that the second document was signed under duress.

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