NURSE Siti Syafika Amira Mohd Rasani does not have the expertise to give statements on whether deceased fireman Muhammad Adib Mohd Kassim was beaten or not, said National Heart Institute (IJN) intensive care unit director Dr Suneta Sulaiman.

The doctor was speaking about the operation theatre nurse who had accused a Kuala Lumpur Hospital pathologist of giving false testimony in the inquest into the fireman’s death.

“I think as a nurse and an OT nurse, it’s not in her expertise to give statement whether the injuries Adib suffered was (due to) an accident or not,” she told the Coroner’s Court at the inquest into the deceased fireman’s death. 

Under the Facebook alias “Cik Miera”, Siti Syafika had made a statement on Facebook which alleged that she “knows the truth” about his death.

She today recanted that statement, citing that she was emotional and “did not know the facts of the case”. 

Dr Suneta told Coroner Rofiah Mohamad that a nurse who is less experienced like Syafika would view a patient like that as “ghastly”. 

“For someone less experienced (like Syafika), seeing a patient like Adib must be ghastly (terkejut) because of the swelling he had when he first came to IJN. He had swelling from his head, neck, to chest to abdomen and his scrotum. His swelling was bad,” she said. 

She said that even with her experience as an intensive care doctor, it is not in her expertise to conclude whether Adib was attacked or not. 

“Even for an intensivist like me, it’s not for me to conclude whether it was done by violence or not,” Dr Suneta, who had testified at the inquest previously, told the court. 

The nurse who testified earlier said she first saw Adib on November 28 last year, when the fireman was admitted to IJN.

“When he was taken to the ICU, I saw his face was swollen and that there were bruises on Adib’s right chest, thighs and scrotum,” she said, adding that Adib was unconscious throughout his stay in the hospital.

During Adib’s 21-day hospitalisation in IJN, Siti Syafika said she had attended to him three times with regards to the use of an extracorporeal membrane oxygenation, or Ecmo, device.

The inquest was called by the government amid conflicting claims on the cause of Adib’s death.

Adib was part of a response team sent from the Subang Jaya fire and rescue station on November 27 last year, to the temple area in answer to a call that cars had been set on fire. He died at IJN on December 17. – March 27, 2019.