'Double standards' condemned in Kugan case

Hindraf has slammed the concurrent three-year jail sentence handed to a police constable found guilty of causing hurt to deceased police detainee A Kugan, decrying the light sentence as a case of double standards.

Its de facto leader and lawyer P Uthayakumar (left) was responding to the verdict by the Shah Alam Sessions Court earlier today, which found police constable V Navindran guilty of two counts of causing hurt to Kugan who died while in police custody.

“If a member of the public had tried to kill a policeman, he would be charged with murder, denied bail and sent to the gallows,” he said, citing the example of a man charged with attempted murder of a police personnel following a motor accident.

“It is one rule for the common man, and one rule for the police,” he said in a phone interview, adding that the lesser charge and light sentence would fail to deter other police officers from acting in the same way.

Kugan, 23, died while in police custody after allegedly being severely beaten up in the interrogation room of the Taipan police station in USJ-Subang Jaya at 7am on Jan 16, 2009.

Uthayakumar also condemned the charges, saying the charge of ‘causing hurt’ was less than a charge of murder.

Even then, he said, Navindran got off lightly as he was only sentenced to a total of three years of prison for the two counts, when Section 330 of the Penal Code lays out a maximum of seven years for each offence.

The fact that it was a police personnel who had inflicted such physical harm on Kugan (left) and within police custody, warrants a much heavier sentence as it was an “aggravating factor”.

Uthayakumar also questioned why only Navindran had been charged when 11 people were placed on desk duty following the incident.

“All these injuries could not have been inflicted by one person,” he said, describing the incident as the “most gruesome murder ever recorded in Malaysia”.

He speculated that only Navindran was charged as he is an Indian Malaysian, in an effort to avoid the impression that the incident was a racial one.

‘Justice not done’

N Surendran, the lawyer for Kugan’s family. also expressed disappointment with the verdict when contacted.

“For the family, justice has not been done,” he said.

Surendran, a vice-president in PKR, said the party would hold a press conference tomorrow for Kugan’s family to address the matter.

“Only one person was charged (and) for a lesser offence. It beggars belief that no one else helped (Navindran) or knew about it,” he said, adding that the matter had been covered up from the beginning.

This was not just a case of murder as it was preceded by excruciating torture, and so a much heavier sentence would be justified, he said.

He added that Kugan’s mother N Indra’s RM100 million civil suit has been fixed for hearing on Nov 2.