Shashi Devan, the lawyer for Suara Rakyat Malaysia (Suaram), said Krishnan Suppiah, 48, was remanded for multiple offences over a period of three weeks. He has now been detained for 21 days under the Prevention of Crimes Act (Poca).
Shashi accused the police of applying for a new remand order a total of six times after failing to acquire enough evidence required to charge him for his alleged offences.
Krishnan was arrested at his home in Selayang at 3am on Sept 2, 2019. He was investigated under Section 379 of the Penal Code initially for lorry theft.
Subsequently, he was also remanded for questioning over the alleged theft of a motorbike, construction materials, a donation box at a mosque and a car.
“They have had the opportunity to detain him for three weeks to investigate the multiple offences over multiple police reports but no charges were ever brought against him in the end,” he told reporters after submitting a complaint to the Human Rights Commission of Malaysia (Suhakam).
“Police detained him for a consecutive period when they failed to gather evidence. Now, they are using a draconian act to detain the suspect for a further 21 days, plus 38 days if you choose to extend the detention.”
Calling this an abuse of the CPC, Shashi said this sort of “chain remand” results in legal detention longer than that allowed for detention without trial under the Security Offences (Special Measures) Act 2012 (Sosma) and Poca.
Under the CPC, courts may grant a remand order of four days if police need more than 24 hours to investigate an alleged offence against a newly-arrested individual.
“To address potential abuses, Parliament actually made an amendment to include Section 117(3) and (4) in the CPC to make sure any detention order granted by the magistrate takes into consideration any immediate detention prior to that application,” he said.
Nevertheless, Shashi said, based on the chronology, the magistrates seemed to be granting remand orders so long as there was a fresh investigation.
The lawyer also said there were multiple breaches of human rights of an arrested person, as stated in the CPC.
“The family lawyer was not informed (of developments in the case), family members were not informed, and the opportunity was never given to the suspect to make phone calls. These are entrenched within the CPC,” he said.
Krishnan’s wife, Vijaya Devi, 36, said she and her daughter, Priya Darshini, 24, were kept in the dark about developments in the case.
“Every night, we had to call the police station to ask who the investigating officer (IO) was for the case,” she said, adding that there were different IOs investigating the case.
Meanwhile, the family’s lawyer, Ganaesh Rau, said Krishnan had been taken on a “roadshow” and detained in different police lock-ups.
He was first taken to the Ampang police station on Sept 2. He was subsequently taken to the Hulu Selangor police station (Sept 11), USJ 8 police station (Sept 13), Sg Buloh police station (Sept 14) and back to the Ampang police station before being detained under Poca.
Ganaesh also said the suspect had alleged that he had been beaten during police detention, but did not say by whom.
Meanwhile, Suhakam commissioner Jerald Joseph, who accepted the complaint, said the issue of “chain remand” had been under the radar of Suhakam for some time.
He said even though such remand orders were legal, police investigations should be more efficient and effective to avoid such “chain remand”.