Eliminating Deaths and Abuse in Custody Together (EDICT) contended that the case involving the woman was not too serious.

“EDICT is perplexed over the need for the police to confiscate her clothes when she was arrested,” the group said in a statement today. “The case is not so serious that her clothes needed to be seized and used as evidence.

“If the identity is the issue, haven’t the police got her identity card number and the video footage that was recorded by a policeman?”

Police yesterday displayed the 34-year-old woman’s clothes at a press conference where Kota Kinabalu district police chief Mohd Zaidi Abdullah said the woman was arrested at a condominium on Jalan Lintas at around 11.20am.

Among the items confiscated were the clothes the woman wore during the incident, her mobile phone, vehicle registration certificate and car keys.

“The clothes were confiscated in order to confirm if it was the same set of clothes as worn by the woman in the video recording,” Zaidi had said.

EDICT also slammed the police for being excessive in applying for a four-day remand of the 11 men who were arrested for breaching the movement control order SOPs while taking part in a funeral procession in Butterworth, Penang.

It said the application for long remand periods could be seen as a lack of awareness over the potential spread of the Covid-19 virus in lock-ups.

“We stress that Section 117 of the Criminal Procedure Code provides that remand orders are only needed when an investigation cannot be completed within 24 hours.

“But we are baffled why the individuals (in the funeral procession) needed to be remanded for so long? Can’t the police take their statements and interrogate them at the same time, and charge them if there was a violation of the law?”

EDICT said police only need to issue compound notices on those who breach SOPs, adding that remanding a suspect or SOP offender was a human rights violation.