Over the past few years, deaths which happened in police custody have received much attention in the country.

It is because of their occurrence that opposition political parties and non-governmental organisations wanted the government to form an Independent Police Complaints and Misconduct Commission (IPCMC) – to investigate and prosecute officers who have taken the law into their hands.

However, this commission never took off because of the strong and vehement opposition from the police force.

The police felt that such a commission would interfere in their investigations and subsequently cripple the effectiveness of the police force as a whole.

However, to accommodate the demands of the public, the government formed the Enforcement Agency Integrity Commission (EAIC) through an act of parliament in 2009 to be headed by a sitting judge and assisted by a number of commissioners.

EAIC is supposed to act on complaints received from the public about deaths in custody and they have been empowered to order investigations and subsequently recommend actions if there had been misconduct on the part of the personnel of the enforcement agencies.

While the ambit of this agency is broad and it has sufficient powers to act on complaints, hold inquiries, and recommend actions, its effectiveness, however, remains in doubt.

One glaring and deliberate omission of the EAIC Act 2009 is the exclusion of the Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission (MACC). Why the MACC has been excluded from Sub-Section Schedule 1(4) which covers 21 agencies is not clear.

Another glaring omission of the EAIC is its lack of focus on death in prisons.

Although it is quite understandable for the agency to focus and hold inquiries of those deaths in police custody on the basis of its sheer number, recently, a number of deaths have been reported coming from the prisons.

Last year, Penang had eight deaths in police custody and one death in prison. In 2015, so far, there has been four deaths in prisons in Penang alone.

Unresolved death in prison cases

The recent death of Shashikumar Selvam in prison raises questions about the nature of custodial deaths in prisons among those who have been remanded and those who have been sentenced.

In the case of Shashikumar Selvam, he was jailed for stealing a bag of rice and two cans of sardines, but shockingly, he received a jail sentence of 10 years.

What is most shocking and unexplainable is his sudden death in prison.

The prison authorities maintained that he hanged himself; however, marks on his body shows that his death might have been caused by the prison guards themselves.

Why would a young and vibrant man hang himself in prison?

Who is going to investigate and prosecute those responsible for the death of Shashikumar? His grandmother is crying for justice.

Hundreds of cases of death in custody remain unresolved to this day.

As the chairperson of the Penang Task Force on Deaths in Police Custody, I have written letters to the Inspector General of Police, the Attorney General (AG), the Minister of Health, and other government bodies for speedy investigations into these deaths.

I have also called for numerous press conferences in Penang to highlight the diabolic nature of death in custody.

Will AG act on those responsible?

Earlier this year, we were emboldened when the coroner, in their investigation of one death in Kuala Lumpur and another in Tampin, came to the conclusion that the police were responsible.

Given this, when is the AG going to punish those officers and men responsible for these two deaths? Can the EAIC mount pressure on the AG and the police?

Will death continue to occur in the custody of both the police and the prison department?

Yes, we have laws and agencies that are supposed to investigate and prosecute those who are responsible for the gross violation of human rights.

The members of these law enforcement agencies continue to think that they can get away with gross abuse of human rights.

As long as there is no investigation and prosecution of the wrong-doers, those in these agencies might be right in their thinking.

The sad thing is that those who have died in the custody of police and the prison authorities are members of the Malaysian working class.

Invariably, those who have died in custody belong to the poorest segment of the Malaysian society.

Thus, in the hands of the police and prison wardens they become extremely vulnerable and often targeted for abuse and gross violation of their human rights.

P RAMASAMY is Deputy Chief Minister II of Penang and the assemblyperson for Perai.