EVERY death in custody should be followed by an inquest as required by law, but of the 110 lockup deaths from 2010 to 2016, 80 were ignored, an activist group said.

Eliminating Deaths and Abuse in Custody Together (EDICT) founder M. Visvanathan said an inquest is mandatory under Section 334 of the Criminal Procedure Code (CPC) for deaths that occurred in a police lockup, prison or mental asylum.

“Out of 110, 80 cases were not investigated by an inquest even though it is mandatory.

“These are numbers that are given in Parliament itself,” Visvanathan, who is also a lawyer, told The Malaysian Insight in an interview.

He is highlighting the numbers again following the revelation of yet another death in custody, this time involving 35-year-old V. Mugilarasu, who is the latest in three custodial deaths since last month.

Mugilarasu, who was remanded for a drug offence, died on July 2 in police custody while being transported to the Sg Buloh Hospital.

The Prisons Department claimed that the machine operator had suffered a heart attack.

But Visvanathan, a lawyer who takes up cases representing families of deceased inmates seeking answers, is contending in Mugilarasu’s case that police did not inform the Selangor coroner of his death.

This is a requirement under the CPC, that police are to immediately report a custodial death to the coroner.

The CPC also requires coroners to view the body in-situ, and conduct an inquest into the death. 

Selangor police chief Noor Azam Jamaludin, however, has rebuffed claims that police kept the coroner in the dark over Mugilarasu’s death, saying current protocols dictate that the body be tested for Covid-19 before a post-mortem is done.

Visvanathan said the Covid-19 protocol was used as a reason for not informing the coroner.

“The law says police must inform the coroner that somebody has died. That is duty.”

If cases are traced back further to 2000, there have been 242 deaths in custody from then until 2014. These statistics have also been highlighted by the Malaysian Human Rights Commission (Suhakam) previously.

Visvanathan said an average of 16 custodial deaths are being reported every year in police lock-ups alone.

From March to June this year, five deaths have been recorded.

In June alone, there were two deaths in three weeks in two separate lockups in the Kuala Lumpur police district.

Despite these being official figures given by the police, Visvanathan is sceptical because the sudden death report (SDR) classification is often used by cops to categorise custodial deaths.

“Police try very hard to say that these people didn’t die in custody. 

“They would say that these detainees died on the way to the hospital or he was confirmed dead in hospital, therefore they don’t qualify to be categorised as someone died in custody,” he said.

He said victims’ families need to pressure the authorities for an inquest and answers as they have a direct interest, whereas EDICT can only represent the families.

“We can ask (the authorities), but it is the families who have the locus standi, they have the legal standing to ask why no inquest was conducted,” he said.

Avoidable deaths

Deaths in custody are avoidable if there is better police training, improvements to working conditions and greater understanding of human rights, Visvanathan said.

He said these are some of the reasons why custodial deaths persist, but it can be overcome if there is political and institutional will.

It is also a myth held by many among the public that deaths in custody affect Malaysians of Indian ethnicity more than other races, Visvanathan added.

Statistics revealed in Parliament previously have shown that more Malays suffer custodial deaths, he said.

“This issue affects all Malaysians, it does not matter whether you’re Malay, Chinese or Indian. It’s not race-biased in any way. 

“I think we should stop seeing this problem from the perspective of race, we should see this as a Malaysian problem,” he said.

Other ways to prevent custodial deaths are by simply adhering to the law in providing detainees their due rights, such as consulting a lawyer, before and during detention.

More often than not, requests to see a lawyer are denied, Visvanathan said.

“It also depends on the law that is used to detain people. Under the Prevention of Crime Act (POCA), one is not given this right but if one is detained under the Penal Code, for example, then they should be given the right to talk to or consult a lawyer.

“So many times, this is omitted and not adhered to. Unfortunately many detainees do not get to consult a lawyer.”

While society is more aware and concerned about custodial deaths now than before and there are some changes in law enforcement, Visvanathan said more effort is needed.

“It’s not only EDICT that should be shouldering this. It is a Malaysian problem.

“The best statistic would be zero. Nobody, absolutely nobody should die in police custody.” – July 12, 2020.