Memo not lodged with Suhakam as no commissioner present
A family who wanted to lodge a complaint with the Human Rights Commission of Malaysia (Suhakam) about their son's death while in police custody, decided to retract their memorandum when no commissioner was present to accept it.
"The commission is belittling our efforts by not having the two commissioners here to accept our memorandum. They are taking us for granted," family lawyer P Uthayakumar told reporters at Suhakam headquarters in Kuala Lumpur today.
Uthayakumar was accompanied by the family of S Tharma Rajen, a 20-year-old waiter from Kuala Lumpur who died on June 21 at the Putrajaya Hospital after being held under police custody for more than two months.
"We do not want to give the memorandum over to Suhakam. We would like to record our dissatisfaction with the commissioners," Uthayakumar said, adding that they will wait for a letter of reply from the commissioners about the reception they received today.
Uthayakumar said he was told on Saturday that Suhakam deputy chairperson Harun Hashim and commissioner Asiah Abu Samah would both be present to accept the memorandum.
However, when about 10 family members and friends came to Suhakam's office today with Uthayakumar, they were told by chief assistant secretary of its investigation arm, Mohd Nasir Abdul Hadi, that he would be accepting it on the commissioners' behalf. Upon learning that, Uthayakumar refused to hand over the memorandum.
Speaking to reporters later, Nasir said the issue was not a major one and called for cooler heads.
"What is the problem? This should not have become an issue. I told him that I would discuss this with the commissioners and that I would bring the memorandum up to them. The commissioners said that they would try," Nasir said.
Open inquiry
In their memorandum, the lawyers and the family called for an open inquiry into Tharma Rajen's death as well as those of others in police lockups over the past 10 years. They also wanted an open inquiry be called for all forms of cruel, inhumane and degrading treatment.
Tharma Rajen was arrested in early April on suspicion of gangsterism.
He was first held at the Kuala Lumpur police headquarters and later remanded at the Brickfields and Cheras district police headquarters before being slapped with a 60-day detention order under the Emergency Ordinance 1960.
His mother, Selvamoni Adaikan, 50, was the last to see him alive.
Tharma Rajen's family claimed that he 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 and has asked Kuala Lumpur High Court judge Mohd Ghazali Mohd Yusoff to make a judicial review on Kajang Magistrate Azahaniz Teh's refusal to let them have the report.
An independent postmortem conducted by University Malaya Medical Centre found the cause of death to be Tuberculosis.
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