Nine years ago last week, 32-year-old
R Sundara Raju died of injuries sustained while he was being held in
police custody at the Klang police station lock-up.
He
had been arrested on 11 Nov2002, and was admitted to the Tengku Ampuan
Rahimah Hospital in Klang a few days later, after he had reportedly been
beaten up in the lock-up. He died in the hospital after being in a
coma for three days. It does not appear that the cause of his injuries
has been made known.
Despite
the requirement that all custodial deaths be investigated by inquiries
conducted pursuant to Chapter XXXII of the Criminal Procedure Code, it
is not clear that an inquest has been conducted into R Sundara Raju’s
death.
Every
death in custody must be thoroughly and impartially investigated. R
Sundara Raju’s death must not be relegated to a mere statistic.
Based
on the statistics disclosed by the Ministry of Home Affairs, 156
persons died in police custody from the year 2000 until Feb 2011.
We express our heartfelt condolences to R Sundara Raju’s family and friends on this anniversary of his death.
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