Suhakam insists it has power to probe custodial deaths

 

Suhakam commissioner Mah Weng Kwai says the Suhakam Act gave the commission the mandate to make investigations on its own accord or in response to complaints.

PETALING JAYA: Suhakam has maintained that it has the authority to inquire into allegations of custodial deaths or any infringement of human rights unless the matter is in court.

Commissioner Mah Weng Kwai said the Suhakam Act gave the commission the mandate to make such investigations on its own accord or in response to complaints.

“In other words, we don’t have to wait for a report to be lodged with Suhakam before an inquiry can start,” he told FMT. “As long as an allegation has come to our attention, we can start.”

He said the only time the commission could not do so would be when a matter was already before a judicial inquiry.

“So, if during our inquiry the matter being probed comes up before a court, then by law we have to suspend our inquiry,” he added, citing Section 12 (2) of the Suhakam Act.

M Visvanathan, who leads a group called EDICT (Eliminating Deaths and Abuse in Custody Together), had said earlier that inquiries into allegations of custodial death did not come under Suhakam’s purview.

Responding to Suhakam’s recent release of a report on deaths in police lock-ups and detention centres, Visvanathan said investigations into custodial deaths were solely within the purview and functions of the coroner’s court under the Criminal Procedure Code.

In the case of G Jestus Kevin, who was found dead in a Bentong police station lock-up last year, Suhakam said the victim succumbed to meningoencephalitis (brain inflammation) with multiple blunt force trauma.

Visvanathan, who is a lawyer representing Kevin’s family in an ongoing inquest in Kuantan, said he had sent a letter to the commission.

Another Suhakam commissioner, Jerald Joseph, told FMT the commission’s inquiry into the case ended last April, months before the commencement of the inquest.

It was therefore not in breach of the Suhakam Act, he added.

“The report was just released because of the movement control order but it was completed earlier,” he said. - FMT