The Human Rights Commission of Malaysia (Suhakam) has kept its word to act on a complaint lodged by a grieving mother when they sent official letters yesterday to the police and a hospital advising the two institutions to uphold human rights principles.

This comes after a second plea was made last Thursday to Suhakam by G Sara Lily who has been trying to claim a body lying in the morgue for almost two months which she believes belongs to her 24-year-old son G Francis Udayappan.

The police and hospital had refused her the body after they claimed a DNA test conducted using her blood sample and bone marrow samples from the body in the University Malaya Medical Centre (UMMC) morgue, was not a match .

Sara however maintained that the body is that of her son after she positively identified it some 50 days ago based on a tattoo, a tooth deformity and the fact that she just recognised that it was him.

Suhakam, who were also urged by lawyers, politicians and human rights groups to get the police to allow a second DNA test to be conducted by an independent chemist, has done just that.

Remove the cloud

"We have sent a letter to the Inspector General of Police ( Mohd Bakri Omar) and the director of UMMC (Mohd Amin Jalaludin) asking them to remove the cloud surrounding the issue and allow the family to conduct the independent DNA test." said Suhakam commissioner Hamdan Adnan when contacted today.

He said he has tried but it was difficult to get the police to release the body to Sara until a new DNA test suggests otherwise.

One of Sara's numerous police reports lodged since the saga began was against the police and UMMC for ' colluding to suppress and hide all evidence' in her son's case. This was when they refused to release the body and also the post-mortem report after she had signed a police statement claiming the decomposed body in the morgue was that of her son.

Francis was arrested by the police on April 14 for a petty theft charge and held at the Brickfields police station. The police claimed he had escaped two days later by jumping into the Klang River. A body believed to be that of Francis' was discovered on May 23.

The family has always maintained that Francis had died while in police custody. They have disputed the police version of his death but a federal police investigation said there was no foul play in the matter.