The acquittal of four police officers of the charge of causing the death of detainee N Dharmendran yesterday is proof of the law enforcement officers' impunity, says NGO Lawyers for Liberty.

Dharmendran was found dead in a Kuala Lumpur police headquarters lockup on May 2013 with staples lodged in his ears and ankles, sparking a widespread outcry.

“This acquittal is symptomatic of the larger problem of law enforcement impunity and the state’s reluctance to hold law enforcement personnel accountable for unlawful killings.

“(This) is turning our police lockups into 'killing fields' where a suspect can die while in custody and there will be no perpetrators, no repercussions and no redress,” LFL executive director Eric Paulsen ( right ) said in statement.

Paulsen said inspector S Hare Krishna, sergeant Jaffri Jaafar, corporal Mohd Nahar and corporal Mohd Haswadi Zamri are not the first police officers to be let off on similar charges.

Very few police personnel have been charged for the numerous deaths in custody and police shootings.

Among those acquitted of past cases are corporal Jenain Subi for the fatal shooting of 14-year-old Aminulrasyid Amzah in 2010, while no one has been charged for the custodial death of DAP political aide Teoh Beng Hock, he said.

Blue wall of silence

Failure to establish the murder motive in the Dharmendran case, due to inconsistency of the prosecution’s case with the medical report also shows the matter had been handled haphazardly, said Paulsen.

“The police had failed to properly investigate the case and there was lack of cooperation from police witnesses, leading to collusion or cover-up,” he said.

The same phenomenon, he said, was referred to in the royal commission of inquiry (RCI) into Teoh’s death as the “blue wall of silence”.

There should be zero tolerance on custodial deaths, he said, as advocated by the Court of Appeal when it awarded damages to the family of death in custody victim A Kugan.

As such, the authorities must take custodial deaths and police shootings seriously and set up the independent police complaints and misconducts commission (IPCMC) mooted by a RCI during former PM Abdullah Badawi's tenure.

Dharmendran’s post-mortem revealed that his wounds were defensive and found handcuff marks on the victim, among others.

The medical report also stated that the injuries were not self-inflicted and that the cause of death was multiple blunt force trauma, implying he was beaten to death while under detention.