Only IPCMC can end lock-up deaths, says crime watchdog

File photo of family members and friends mourning at Dharmendran’s funeral in Kuala Lumpur last month. A government hospital autopsy showed Dharmendran had died as the result of multiple beatings he received in a police lock-up.KUALA LUMPUR, June 4 — Only an Independent Police Complaints and Misconduct Commission (IPCMC) can check police abuse and put an end to the growing number of lock-up deaths, crime watchdog MyWatch said today as it joined the widening chorus of civil society groups and Malaysians clamouring for law enforcement reform.

According to human rights group Suaram, a total of eight men have died under police custody in the past five months.

“MyWatch strongly believes that only the establishment of IPCMC as proposed would put an end to all the custodial deaths as well as disciplinary issues of PDRM,” MyWatch chairman R. Sri Sanjeevan said in a statement, referring to the Royal Malaysian Police by its Malay initials.

“Committee established by PDRM headed by IGP himself is not good enough,” he added, and highlighted that the move could still be subject to a “cover-up” within the force.

Bukit Aman announced last month that it had formed a special task force committee headed by Inspector-General of Police Tan Sri Khalid Abu Bakar, a week after the death of N. Dharmendran on May 21 in the city police contingent headquarters here while under remand.

The crime watchdog chief said any independent body formed should have a mixed representation comprising senior ranking policemen, retired policemen, judges as well as members of non-governmental organisations.

Sri Sanjeevan also offered his group to be part of the IPCMC, and suggested that retired IGP Tan Sri Musa Hassan could be its patron.

The Inspector General’s Standing Order, which Sri Sanjeevan said is the standard operating procedure for the police, should be reviewed and made public as the guidelines for police action should not be secret.

The deaths of eight detainees over the past five months, three within 11 days of each other, have triggered a public outrage over the police treatment of suspects in the lock-up, especially after a government hospital autopsy report on Dharmendran revealed the 32-year-old had died as the result of multiple beatings.

A United Nations Working Group on Arbitrary Detention 2010 visit to Malaysian prisons and detention centres reported in 2011 that between 2003 and 2007, “over 1,500 people died while being held by authorities.”

The Malaysian Bar, civil society groups and several politicians from both sides of the divide have called for the IPCMC to be implemented to reform the police force since 2006.

The IPCMC, which was mooted by a royal commission chaired by former Chief Justice Tun Mohamed Dzaiddin Abdullah but shot down by the police, was to be modelled on the United Kingdom’s Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC), as well as other police oversight bodies in New South Wales and Queensland in Australia, and Hong Kong.