news feature

Ramli Othman was a loving husband and caring father, slogging at two jobs to make ends meet. He helped out at his brother's motor workshop at night and during the day he toiled like a machine at a local factory.

As the sole breadwinner in his family, Ramli certainly knew his responsibility as a husband and father. He had no choice but to work hard as he had four other mouths to feed.

Last month, his hard work was beginning to bear fruit. The furniture factory where he worked in Puchong, Steel Artwright, confirmed him as a spray operator after three months.

He told his 20-year-old wife that they would celebrate their wedding anniversary this year. It had been five years since they were married and they'd never celebrated the occasion.

For Ramli, 25, life was beginning to look good. But the young father of three never lived to celebrate that happy day.

Ramli died last Wednesday at the Universiti Malaya Medical Centre, two days after an 'overzealous' policeman allegedly clobbered his head twice with a wooden plank.

According to the family, Ramli was on a motorcycle, with his friend, Fadelli Maulud, 20. They were on their way to a nearby workshop to retrieve a spanner. As it was only a short distance from their homes, both men did not wear crash helmets. Although it is an offence under the Road Traffic Act, motorcyclists in villages often found it a nuisance to put a helmet when riding within their vicinity.

But Ramli paid a high price for his careless habit of not donning a helmet while riding near his home. When he and his friend approached a roadblock at Batu 13 Jalan Puchong near a toll plaza, he must have realised his folly and made a sudden U-turn.

Full impact

His action was seen by two policemen who gave chase on foot and one of them swung a plank at the two. The pillion rider ducked but Ramli received the full impact of the blow. He lost control of his machine and crashed into a lamp post.

The pillion driver later lodged a report alleging that the policeman who was armed swung the plank at Ramli a second time hitting him on the head again.

When malaysiakini met Ramli's widow, Siti Rohana Mohammad, at their humble kampung house on Sunday, she appeared lost, even shy in the presence of so many journalists, but was visibly calm and composed.

"I really don't know what to do now," said the bespectacled Siti, craddling her three- month-old daughter Siti Norliana, her eyes brimming with tears. Her two sons, Saifullah, 4, and Mohd Nasrullah, 3, clung to their mother as if they feared she was about to desert them, too.

Siti, who has never been employed, said she would live with her parents in Puchong Permai for a while before she planned on what to do next.

"I can only think about my children now. They need me," she said.

Premonition

Though it has been said that "death comes like a thief in the night", sometimes it also announces itself by a kind of scent, action and even sounds of silence.

Three days before the tragedy, Siti said Ramli was searching anxiously for his brother who runs the workshop where he was working part-time.

"He told me 'I miss him. I really need to see him'," Siti said.

But Ramli never got the chance to see his brother, Rahmad, again.

Rahmad, 34, who was also present on Sunday, cried uncontrollably while relating the tragedy, knowing only now that his brother's 'mysterious' search for him days earlier was a premonition of bad things to come.

Somehow, Rahmad managed to see his younger brother before he died. When he heard that Ramli had "met with an accident", he rushed to the scene and found him sprawled on the road with a gaping wound in his head.

Two policemen stood there watching, Rahmad said, but they refused to do anything.

"I pleaded with them to take him to the hospital. I held their legs and begged them for help but all they said was, ' Dia dah buat salah...padan muka (he committed an offence...serves him right).

"I cannot believe it. How could they just stand there and see a man died? Where is their sense of humanity, their sense of justice? Policemen are supposed to help us," he said, crying, oblivious to the crowd around him.

Rahmad said when he realised that the police would not budge, he ran up and down the road trying to flag down any passerby to send his brother to the hospital but no one stopped except a taxi 20 minutes later.

Lack of compassion

His mother, Muthina Paiman, 58, was devastated at this lack of human compassion in today's modern world.

"They (policemen) didn't have to do anything much... all they needed to do was to call an ambulance and maybe they could have saved my son. He was still alive then," she said in between tears.

"Anyone would have stopped to help if they knew a man was dying, wouldn't they? Even though he was soaked in blood, you would have taken him to the hospital in your car. You wouldn't have minded even if your car seat was tainted with blood, would you?" she tried hard to reason.

Her husband, Othman Hashim, 57, was equally distraught and angry but was determined to seek justice for his dead son.

"Even if he was wrong, what they (the policemen) could do was to issue him a summons. There was no necessity to hurt people like that. Why do they have to be so brutal?

"All I want to do now is to get justice for my son. I am asking the lawyers who are willing to assist us to conduct this case with due diligence. Those who are guilty must get the punishment they deserve so that others do not have to suffer the way we did," he said.

DAP lawyers are taking up the case for the family. The party's Legal Aid Bureau chief M Manoharan said the family will be taking legal action against the four policemen — three constables and a lance corporal — involved in the incident.

RM2 million suit

They are also planning to sue the Puchong police station chief, the Petaling Jaya district police chief, the inspector-general of police and the Malaysian government for RM2 million.

"Ramli's wife is unemployed. At least with this compensation, the widow will be able to start a small business and take care of her family," said Manoharan.

DAP national youth committee member T Kannan, also a lawyer, said that the police action was "totally unacceptable" as it was "such a minor offence (not wearing a crash helmet)".

Federal police chief Norian Mai's assurance that the case will be investigated "without bias" was not very reassuring especially when there are 600-odd cases of people who died in the hands of the police still pending in the Home Ministry.

The report prepared by Parti Reformasi Insan Malaysia whose registration is still pending, was submitted in 2000 to various authorities, but that had appeared to be the end of it.

Whether the four policemen were guilty or not will be determined by the revelant authorities but the fate that befell Ramli, and the countless other allegations of abuse, are a stark reminder that unchecked power become insolent.