DAP dares IGP to propose revival of IPCMC

Kit Siang said eyebrows were raised when Khalid said police never objected to the commission being established.

KUALA LUMPUR: DAP Parliamentary Leader Lim Kit Siang has challenged the Inspector-General of Police to propose to the Cabinet to revive the IPCMC Bill with an amendment to allow appeal against conviction.

Reacting to a yesterday’s statement by IGB Khalid Abu Bakar that police had never objected to the establishment of the IPCMC (Independent Police Complaints and Misconduct Commission), Lim said the “eyebrows of all Malaysians would have been raised” by the remark.

News reports yesterday quoted Khalid as saying that police objected only to certain terms in the IPCMC recommendation because they did not leave the police with any rights.

According to earlier reports, there is no clause in the recommendation that would allow police to appeal against conviction.

In his press statement today, Lim asked: “Is Khalid now saying that the police will support the IPCMC proposal if the police is given the right to appeal against any conviction?

“Is Khalid prepared to take the initiative to propose to the Home Minister, the Prime Minister and the Cabinet that the IPCMC Bill, giving the police the right to appeal against conviction, should be presented to Parliament for passage?”

He said it was “imperative” that the IPCMC be established and gave the following reasons:

One of the main objectives of IPCMC was to end deaths in police custody but police custodial deaths have not ended and have continued to be a national scandal despite the three-year operation of the Enforcement Agency Integrity Commission (EAIC).

The establishment of a special committee headed by the Inspector-General of Police in June last year has failed to curb police custodial deaths.

The Court of Appeal in the A Kugan case in August called for “zero tolerance” of police custodial deaths and recommended that independent public inquiries be held for all such cases.

Lim recalled that the Court of Appeal censured Khalid, who was the Selangor police chief at the time, for acting both as “judge and jury” and committing “an affront to fair play and transparency” when he negotiated with the Attorney-General for investigations in their probe into Kugan’s death to be confined to Section 330 of the Penal Code for “voluntarily causing hurt”.