Report: MACC denies senior officer ‘enticed married woman’

PETALING JAYA: There is no truth to an allegation that a senior officer with the Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission (MACC) had “enticed a married woman”, an act that is considered a crime in Malaysia, an MACC spokesperson told Malaysiakini today.

The spokesperson was responding to a report in a local vernacular daily which said a police report had been filed alleging that the MACC officer had breached Section 498 of the Penal Code.

Section 498 – Enticing or taking away or detaining with a criminal intent a married woman – states that it is a crime if a man “takes or entices away any woman who is and whom he knows, or has reason to believe, to be the wife of any other man, from that man with intent that she may have illicit intercourse with any person”.

Anyone found guilty can be jailed for up to two years or fined, or both.

Sin Chew Daily reported that a businessman had filed the police report, and this was confirmed by Wangsa Maju district police chief Mohamed Roy Suhaimi Sarif, who said the case had been referred to the federal police headquarters in Bukit Aman.

In the report by the complainant, it was stated that the MACC officer’s alleged relationship with the married woman had been revealed in a video clip on YouTube.

The complainant is said to have chanced upon the video clip. However, there is no further information provided on when the video clip was made, or how long it had been since it was uploaded to the video-sharing website.

According to the police report filed, the woman in question was divorced as of last month, and her marriage ended due to her alleged relationship with the MACC officer named.

Controversial law

Section 498 is a controversial law in the country that has sparked various debates on whether it is constitutionally legal in the first place.

Aside from a case in July this year, when a 43-year-old teacher in Pahang was charged with trying to persuade a married woman to have sex with him at a house, the last time the enactment made the spotlight was in 2009.

The case involved celebrity-model Daphne Iking, with her ex-husband accusing another man of having enticed her while she was still married to him.

Lawyers were previously reported as saying that Section 498 is rarely raised in Malaysian courts because it is often represented with two arguments.

The first argument is that Section 498 is an unequal law. This conflicts with Article 8(1) and 8(2) of the Federal Constitution which states that “all persons are equal before the law”.

In the case concerning Iking in 2009, lawyers for the accused had argued that Section 498 only blames the “enticer” of the wife, and not the wife as well.

The second reason why the law is not normally seen in a Malaysian courtroom is because it is deemed to be outdated, with no place in modern society.

Section 498 originates from Indian law, drafted more than a century ago, which itself is based on old Victorian laws, written even earlier than that. -FMT