Lawyer: 'Legally indefensible' to refer girls to religious dept for statutory rape

 

Human rights lawyer Rajesh Nagarajan has slammed suggestions by Kelantan police that girls under 16 involved in statutory rape cases should be referred to religious authorities, calling the proposal legally indefensible and morally wrong.

In a statement, Rajesh said a child below 16 cannot consent to sex under Malaysian law, stressing that describing such cases as “consensual” wrongly relabels victims as offenders while shielding perpetrators from accountability.

“This is a fundamental abuse of police power,” he said.

Rajesh emphasised that statutory rape is a serious criminal offence under federal law, not a moral lapse or religious transgression, and should not fall under the purview of religious enforcement bodies.

“When police divert child victims into religious departments, they are abandoning their legal duty and re-victimising children through state action,” he said.

Five cases referred to religious department

Kelantan police chief Yusoff Mamat said last week that girls aged 16 and below caught for consensual sex will be referred to the Kelantan Islamic Department (Jaheaik) for further action under the syariah courts.

On Dec 18, Yusoff was reported as saying that five of such cases had been referred to Jaheaik so far, in line with the Kelantan ruler’s decree for the police to work with the state religious department on statutory rape cases.

Kelantan police chief Yusoff Mamat

Rajesh, meanwhile, also criticised the government’s failure to immediately correct or censure the narrative, arguing that silence amounts to endorsement.

“A government that allows its enforcement agencies to punish children for crimes committed against them has forfeited any claim to protecting child welfare,” he said.

Rajesh stressed that the issue is not about religion but about law, power, and the systematic targeting of vulnerable girls, adding that moral policing has no place in criminal justice.

“Children who are sexually exploited are victims - not criminals, not moral offenders, and not subjects for religious punishment.

“If the state cannot recognise this basic legal truth, then it is the state - not the child - that stands guilty,” he said.

Earlier today, Suhakam stressed that with rape being on the Federal List, investigations into the matter are under the purview of the police, not the state religious department.

The human rights commission also noted that Malaysia, as a party to the Convention on the Rights of the Child, is obliged to protect all children from sexual exploitation and abuse, and to treat the best interests of the child as a primary consideration in all actions involving children. - Mkini