Lawyers: Cops sending wrong signal over Seremban abduction

Malay Mail
by Zurairi AR and Ida Lim

KUALA LUMPUR, April 14 — The police’s refusal to act against a Muslim convert for allegedly abducting his son despite a civil court granting the mother custody may encourage more such cases in the future, lawyers have said.

 

The legal practitioners said the inference was obvious after the police said it would not pursue Izwan Abdullah (previously N. Viran) who took his son by force from his estranged wife, claiming it could not act due to conflicting orders from the shariah and civil courts.

“At the end of the day, by saying they can’t do anything, are they giving a signal in future cases that people can take the law into their own hands and police will do nothing?” asked Bar Council’s Human Rights Committee co-chairman Andrew Khoo here.

“If that’s the case, that’s a serious indictment in abrogation of duties and responsibility to protect citizens from harm, from use of force.”

On Monday, the Seremban High Court granted S. Deepa, 30, full custody of her two children ― a nine-year-old daughter and a six-year-old son ― as her marriage to Izwan, 31, in 2004 was a civil union and did not come under shariah law.

Izwan allegedly snatched their son from outside her house in Jelebu, Negri Sembilan on Wednesday, based on a previous shariah court order that awarded him custody.

 

In her police report lodged over the incident, Deepa said Izwan sped off with the boy in a green Mitsubishi Pajero, and that she sustained injuries when she gave a chase as her clothes were caught in the car door.

Inspector-General of Police (IGP) Tan Sri Khalid Abu Bakar subsequently said that the police would not act against Izwan.

The Jelebu police also said it was unable to take action apart from probing him under the Domestic Violence Act and the Penal Code, for alleged violence and assault respectively against Deepa.

Civil liberties lawyer Syahredzan Johan said it was the norm for the police to refrain from acting when there are conflicting orders from Shariah and civil courts, but he stopped short of calling it a standard operating procedure.

“It fuels the perception, rightly or wrongly, that Muslims get preference by the authorities. And it gives a bad image to the religion,” Syahredzan told The Malay Mail Online.

In a series of tweet earlier, the lawyer also blamed the apparent police indifference on those who wish to see Islam trumping other faiths, even at the expense of justice.

“In your quest to establish the ‘supremacy’ of your religion, what you are in fact doing is turning people away from it,” said Syahredzan.

Constitutional lawyer Edmund Bon pointed to a bigger issue within the police force itself, saying the officers have taken the matter into their own hands without seeking legal advice.

“The IGP and police don’t quite understand law as they ought to … The IGP should have at least referred the matter to the Attorney-General for legal views and interpretation if he was unclear,” Bon claimed.

According to Bon, the IGP should have enforced the High Court’s order as the Shariah court’s order was not applicable to a non-Muslim, in this case Deepa, who is a Hindu.

While Khoo and Syahredzan acknowledged that the police were right to observe that there were two conflicting orders, they said the agency should still probe Izwan as the order still did not absolve him of forcibly seizing the boy.

“Remember, the custody order does not give the father blanket permission to forcefully take the child away. A lawful order does not permit unlawful behaviour to enforce that order,” Syahredzan said.

Khoo also criticised the IGP for claiming that no kidnapping has occurred and the police was confident of the safety of the child.

“Does he know that for a fact or is he making an assumption? Has any investigation been done to ascertain the child is safe? You simply cannot assume,” said Khoo.

Both civil and Shariah lawyers had since stressed that the Islamic court lacks jurisdiction over custody cases in a civil marriage even if one party later converts to Islam, citing the Federal Constitution’s Ninth Schedule.

While Deepa’s legal team will now file contempt proceedings against Izwan next week, Bon claimed that the IGP himself could also be cited for contempt of court by his inaction.

Deepa has since gone into hiding, fearful that her husband may be emboldened to try and take their daughter following the IGP’s declaration on Friday that the police will not act against him over the abduction.

It is understood that Viran, a former lorry driver who currently works for an Islamic NGO called Yayasan Kasih Sayang, had converted both their children in April last year without Deepa’s consent.

Deepa, who filed for divorce and custody of the children in December last year, has been estranged from her husband since 2011.

The case is another in a series of inter-faith custody battles that highlight the complexities of Malaysia’s parallel civil and Shariah legal systems.