A protracted 'John Doe' inquest was further stretched today when the Attorney-General's Chambers sought to impeach the credibility of key witness G Sara Lily, the mother of missing police detainee G Francis Udayappan.

DPP Faizah Mohd Salleh made the application today under section 155(c) of the Evidence Act 1950 on grounds that Sara's testimony contradicted her statement to the police following the ' disappearance ' of her son from custody in April last year.

Faizah did not specify, however, which of Sara Lily's ( photo ) statements exactly were contradictory.

The inquest has been called to determine the identity of a male whose body was found in the river in Puchong more than a month later.

Sara Lily had claimed that the body was that of her son after making a identification at the Universiti Malaya Medical Centre morgue.

Her lawyer Ravi Nekoo objected to the application, saying section 155 could not be used in a coroner's court because an inquest does not fall into the category of a common trial.

"The objective of this inquest is different from the objectives of a criminal trial," he told magistrate Nazran Mohd Sham, who is sitting as a coroner.

Faizah argued that nothing in the Evidence Act exempts judicial inquests from an impeachment exercise.

"The Act shall apply to all judicial proceedings in or before any court, but not to affidavits presented to any court or officer nor to any proceedings before an arbitrator," said Faizah reading from section 2 of the Act.

"This shows that the definition applies to all judicial proceedings in all courts, and this inquest is a type of judicial proceeding. This courts falls under the statement of 'any court'."

Nazran deferred the proceedings to Sept 15-16 to hear further submissions from both parties.

If the impeachment succeeds, Sara Lily could face perjury charges and affected parts of the testimony to date would be struck out of the court records.

Query over tattoos

Earlier, when questioned by the DPP, Sara Lily said no one had helped her when she lodged seven police reports between April and June last year.

When Faizah showed her photos of a badly decomposed body, Sara Lily initially testified that the tattoos on it were that of her son ( right ).

Following her lawyer's objection to the question, however, the coroner rephrased the question, asking whether she could see any tattoos on the body in the photos shown to her.

Sara Lily replied "in the photos, no...", but clarified that she did see tattoos on the body in the morgue when she was called to identify the remains.

At the last hearing, she told the inquest that Francis had tattoos depicting an angel and a religious symbol on his left and right arms respectively, and the letters 'l-o-v-e' tattooed on the fingers of his left hand.

Asked at the time by Faizah how she could identify the body at the morgue as that of her son, she said she had seen the same tattoos. She also testified that relatives and friends had also identified the body as that of her son.