POLICE arrested 27,581 people and issued 16,900 fines for violating the standard operating procedure, as the movement-control order, which was enforced on March 18, enters its 148th day today.

Federal CID deputy director Mior Faridalathrash Wahid told The Malaysian Insight most of the offences came under the Prevention and Control of Infectious Diseases Act 1988 (Act 342) and the Prevention and Control of Infectious Diseases (Measures within the Infected Local Areas) Regulations 2020.

These included not practising social distancing, mass gatherings, violating travel rules, allowing more than four people in a car, exceeding 20 people at funerals and operating barber shops and beauty salons.

Some MCO violators were also charged under various crimes, said Mior.

“There were 27,581 people detained for not following the SOP and from this figure, 21,724 were charged in court.

“More than 3,163 were remanded while 1,448 were given police bail,” Mior said, adding that 1,246 cases were classified as “no further action”.

Police issued 16,900 fines between March 18 and August 12, including 221 against individuals for not wearing masks since it was made mandatory from August 1.

“Overall, 44,481 had some kind of brush with the law during the MCO.”

Politicians and VIPs who flouted the rules were also not spared, he said.

A case in point was Deputy Health Minister Dr Noor Azmi Ghazali and Perak exco Razman Zakaria who pleaded guilty to violating the MCO. Both were photographed, along with 30 others, having a meal at a tahfiz school in Lenggong, Perak.

Both were jointly charged with 13 others and fined a maximum RM1,000 each.

Another prominent case was Nurulhidayah Ahmad Zahid and her husband, who were each fined RM800 by the magistrates’ court for breaching the MCO.

The 41-year-old daughter of Umno president Ahmad Zahid Hamidi and her husband, Saiful Nizam Mohd Yusoff, pleaded guilty to violating Regulation 3(1) of the Prevention and Control of Infectious Diseases (Measures within the Infected Local Areas) Regulations 2020.

Mior said not all the MCO violations are handled under these laws and some under the Penal Code, especially those caught obstructing civil servants from carrying out their duties.

Those who fell in this category were those who argued with police, hurled racial abuse at officers carrying out their duties or crashed into roadblocks.

One MCO violator also broke a police officer’s leg.

“This led to claims there were different set of rules for different groups of people,” he said after some offenders were handed jail sentences. – August 14, 2020.