Mystery ‘police’ after Sivanesan?

Sivanesan Tanggavelu attending the Teoh Beng Hock inquest yesterday. – Picture by Choo Choy May

KUALA LUMPUR, Sept 10 – After being told to report to Jenjarom police station near Banting tonight, T. Sivanesan, who claimed anti-graft officers had assaulted him last year, went along with lawyer Gobind Singh Deo, only to find that no one there knew what was going on.

Sivanesan’s testimony at the Teoh Beng Hock inquest yesterday suggested Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission (MACC) officers torture people during questioning.

Tonight, several persons came to his home in Jenjarom but he was not home at the time. It is unclear if these persons were policemen.

The DAP’s Lim Kit Siang had sent out tweet messages earlier saying persons he was told were policemen had gone to Sivanesan’s house to arrest him. Since he was out, they apparently left a message for him to report to the Jenjarom police station.

But when he arrived at the station with his lawyer Gobind, policemen there were unaware of any such request.

Earlier today, the MACC failed in its bid at the High Court in Petaling Jaya to remove Sivanesan’s damaging evidence that its men torture people during questioning.

The national anti-graft body had objected strongly to letting Sivanesan testify as a witness in the coroner’s court tasked to find out the cause of Teoh’s death.

Sivanesan told the coroner’s court yesterday that he had been badly beaten up by Selangor graft busters during interrogation at their office in Plaza Masalam, Shah Alam last year. He had to be hospitalised for four days.

Photographs detailing his injuries and a police report filed in September last year complaining about MACC brutality were admitted as evidence.

MACC’s legal director Datuk Abdul Razak Musa, who is holding a watching brief at Teoh’s inquest, insists that any evidence from Sivanesan, who is a suspect in a separate and ongoing investigation by the Selangor MACC, is “not relevant” to efforts to establish how Teoh died.

He maintained the same position in the High Court today but Judge Yeoh Wee Siam dismissed the MACC’s application to review and revise the ruling made by the coroner’s court. She also denied the national anti-graft body’s bid to postpone the inquest from continuing tomorrow, pending their appeal at the Court of Appeal in Putrajaya.