Ramkarpal urges home minister to confirm if deputy IGP made remarks about student’s rape threat

 

Lawyer Ramkarpal Singh is pictured at the Kuala Lumpur High Court September 9, 2020. — Picture by Yusof Mat Isa

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KUALA LUMPUR, April 28 — The Home Ministry should summon Deputy Inspector-General of Police Datuk Seri Acryl Sani Abdullah Sani to confirm if he made the remarks about a student’s claim of rape threats for which two news outlets were being investigated, said Ramkarpal Singh.

The DAP National Legal Bureau chairman said it was unclear why the Home Ministry has summoned the news outlets over Acryl’s remarks when he has not expressly denied them.

“No doubt, the police come within the jurisdiction of the Home Ministry but questions arise as to why such investigations are going to be carried out, particularly when to my knowledge, no police report has been lodged claiming the reports by Malaysiakini and China Press were false,” he said in a statement.

Ramkarpal questioned if this meant that Acryl’s remarks as reported by Malaysiakini and China Press was factual.

“It should be noted that Bukit Aman Police corporate communication secretariat representative Supt Skandaguru Anandan was reported to have said yesterday that the police were taking the said rape threat seriously and did not view it as a joke.

“He was also reported to have said that Acryl Sani’s ‘may be a joke’ comment referred to the aspects that were being investigated and it did not mean the issue was being taken lightly, which seems to confirm that Acryl Sani did make the remarks, as reported in the news articles,” he said.

The Bukit Gelugor MP added that Skandaguru similarly did not deny that Acryl ever made such remarks.

“The police might claim that the context of Acryl Sani’s speech suggests that this so-called joke was an aspect of its investigations.

“However this certainly does not, in any way, indicate any wrongdoing on the part of Malaysiakini or China Press if they simply reported what he said, since Acryl Sani did not clarify the purported context in which he said it,” Ramkarpal said.

He urged Home Minister Datuk Seri Hamzah Zainudin to confirm if Acryl Sani would also be summoned. In the event the deputy IGP is not called, it would be hard to dismiss the possibility that Malaysiakini and China Press are being victimised for reporting the truth.

Yesterday, the ministry said that the news outlets are being summoned as it viewed the matter seriously, and is seeking to obtain an explanation as well as further information regarding the media reports concerned.

This followed a statement by Bukit Aman’s IGP Secretariat, which claimed that Malaysiakini and China Press used confusing headlines and failed to provide the full context of Acryl Sani’s comments when he addressed the topic at a press conference in Shah Alam on Monday.

The case in question concerns two police reports lodged by a 17-year old student, the initial one aimed at calling out a teacher who allegedly made jokes about rape, and the second over an apparent rape threat she received from one of her classmates.

The student, Ain Husniza Saiful Nizam, gained attention after a social media post she shared related how the male teacher had supposedly made a rape joke during school lessons in the presence of both male and female students, with her exposé later triggering the alleged threats. - malaymail