Teoh’s family to challenge RCI verdict

The family will be turning to the court to set aside the RCI ruling which stated that Teoh Beng Hock committed suicide.

PETALING JAYA: Teoh Beng Hock’s family will seek to overturn the Royal Commission of Inquiry’s decision that the former DAP aide committed suicide.

Gobind Singh, the lawyer representing the family, said his client would file a judicial review for an order of certiorari to set aside the RCI’s finding.

He said the suit would be filed with the Kuala Lumpur High Court this Wednesday.

“We are saying that the finding of suicide is unreasonable, without merit, illegal and without basis whatsoever and therefore unsustainable in law. It must be quashed,” he told FMT.

Gobind explained that the legal suit would focus on the “fourth interrogation” which the royal panel postulated to have occurred.

The commission had, in its findings, stated that this fourth interrogation was the one that “broke” Teoh and drove him to end his own life.

“The commissioners took into account matters which they supposedly should not have taken into account,” said Gobind.

“The factual matrix only paints of events that transpired during the first three interrogations. The fourth was of course an exercise of conjecture on the part of the commission, which we say is fully inappropriate,” added the Puchong MP, who questioned how the commissioners, without any basic evidence to support the facts, could enter “the realm of conjecture and assumptions”.

Teoh, 30, was the political aide of Selangor exco Ean Yong Hian Wah. He was found dead on July 16, 2009 on the fifth floor corridor of Plaza Masalam in Shah Alam after he was questioned overnight by Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission(MACC) officers at their then Selangor headquarters on the 14th floor.

Teoh was a witness into investigations of alleged abuse of state funds by Ean Yong, who had since been cleared of any wrongdoing.

The RCI, which released its report on July 22, unanimously found that Teoh was driven to suicide after coming under aggressive and continuous questioning from MACC officers.

Meanwhile, Gobind said that a civil suit against MACC to seek damages over Teoh’s death would be filed in mid September.

The suit would focus on the inquest finding that ruled that Teoh had pre-fall bruises.