A DAP lawmaker claimed that when his colleague received a bullet in the mail, police personnel had handled it with their bare hands.

Lim Lip Eng was responding to inspector-general of police Khalid Abu Bakar, who criticised
Bersih chairperson Maria Chin Abdullah for handling a bullet sent to her, therefore contaminating the evidence.

Khalid said Maria should not have paraded the bullet with her bare hands during a press conference yesterday as the police needed to lift fingerprints from it to facilitate investigations into the death threat.

However, Lim recalled a similar incident involving Petaling Jaya Utara MP Tony Pua in 2010, where the pair took a bullet to the Damansara Utama police station in Selangor to file a report.

"The policemen at the counter examined the bullet with their bare hands and told us it was a M16 bullet," he told Malaysiakini.

Lim said Khalid was the Selangor police chief at the time.

"I agree that no one should touch the bullet sent with a death threat until after the fingerprints are lifted by the forensic personnel.

"I just wanted to point out to Khalid that not all his personnel are aware of basic criminal investigation knowledge," he added.

Lim claimed when the bullet reached the hands of the investigating officer, the police wanted Pua's blood sample to check his DNA to ensure the death threat was not staged.

"We told the investigating officer that the police could easily obtain Pua's DNA without his blood sample.

"We also told the investigating officer that the bullet was already covered with fingerprints from many policemen before it reached the investigating officer," he said.

Earlier, Lim took to Twitter to complain to Khalid about the incident six years ago.

"It has been six years, what is the status of Pua's report. Where has the M16 bullet gone to? Everything is 'No Further Action'?" he said in a post tagging the police chief.

Yesterday, Maria revealed she received a death threat in the form of a .45 calibre bullet and a note, which described it as a final warning.

Maria believed the death threat was delivered to her house on the eve of the Nov 19 Bersih 5 rally, the same day she was arrested under the Security Offences (Special Measures) Act 2012 and held for 10 days.