The officer in the iconic photo is Zaman Khan Rahim Khan who as a super cop was a media sensation, often providing striking images at the scene of a crime or tragedy.
He sometimes held his press conferences at the most unusual of places to the amazement of crime reporters.
As the Negeri Sembilan police chief in the late 1970s, he held a press conference at a cemetery in Gemencheh where two communist terrorists were shot dead.
He also spoke to reporters inside a derailed coach after a passenger train jumped the rails in Bahau.
It was all very Zaman Khan. Daring, deft and untiring.
Zaman Khan, a highly-recognisable and well-known police officer especially in the ’70s and ’90s, died yesterday at the National Heart Institute.
The former director of the federal criminal investigation department, director of internal security and public order and director-general of the prisons department was 80.
His professionalism earned him great respect and admiration from his peers, with former inspector-general of police, Mohd Hanif Omar, saying: “Today, I lost my brother.”
Zaman Khan, youngest son of Pathan cloth seller Rahim Khan – who sold his wares walking from village to village in Kelantan – was unstoppable from the time he joined the police force as cadet ASP at the age of 20.
The kampung boy went on to become an ace investigator, explosives expert, jungle and urban warfare specialist, crisis negotiator and a crimebuster who tamed unruly towns and cities.
It was during his time as CID director that the push was made to start forensic investigations.
In his 35 years of police work, he may have handled the highest number of high-profile cases in the history of crime in Malaysia.
After he retired as director-general of the prisons department in 1997, he became active in the fight against the spread of HIV and drug abuse and gave motivational talks to university students.
In 2019, he disclosed a family tragedy involving HIV and AIDS after receiving the Malaysian AIDS Foundation Patron’s Award for fighting the spread of the diseases among drug users.
He said in an interview with Malay Mail he became an advocate after a nephew became infected and spread it to his wife and two children. All of them died.
Zaman Khan, who was Malaysian AIDS Council president from 2010-2011, was also quoted saying another nephew also died after getting HIV through unprotected sex.
The extraordinary adventures of the no-nonsense Zaman Khan are the stuff of legends.
In 1975, he was at the centre of the Japanese Red Army siege at the American International Assurance (AIA) building in Kuala Lumpur.
He was confronted with Malaysia’s first hostage-taking crisis on his last day as special action unit (UTK) deputy commander before taking up the post of Selangor CID chief.
In 1982, as Penang police chief, he had to deal with a riot at the Pulau Jerejak corrective facility that held the hardcore May 13 firebrands.
The two-day rampage was sparked by the decision to stop families of detainees from bringing home-cooked food to celebrate Chinese New Year.
Missing their fortnightly nasi lemak breakfast twice was also cited as a cause for the riot that had the island burning.
Zaman Khan said in an interview that when he threatened to open fire with his M-16 despite no back-up, one of the rioters from Klang yelled, “Don’t play with this mad fellow. He will really shoot you all”. The siege ended.
He was also in the thick of action during the hostage-taking crises in Pudu Prison in 1986 and at the Kuantan Prison a year later.
One of his missions as deputy commander of UTK in the ’70s was to capture Wong Swee Chin (Botak Chin) alive.
His men perservered although Wong’s network of supporters among the poor was far-reaching and Sentul, Segambut and Jalan Ipoh in Kuala Lumpur were “untouchable” areas.
He noted then that there was all-round relief when Wong was captured at a sawmill off Jalan Ipoh in 1976. Wong was executed in 1981.
Another thug hunted by Zaman Khan’s men was trigger-happy and ill-tempered, P Kalimuthu (Bentong Kali), who reportedly killed 16 people. Kalimuthu was shot dead in 1993 at a house in Bukit Damansara, Kuala Lumpur, on a shoot-on-sight order.
In Zaman Khan’s final days as CID director in 1993, he personally handled the mysterious disappearance of rising Umno politician Mazlan Idris around the time of the party’s Raub division election.
He led the search party that made the gruesome discovery of 18 parts of Mazlan’s body stuffed in a cemented pit. The killing had the element of witchcraft.
Former pop singer turned bomoh, Maznah Ismail (Mona Fandey), her husband and another man were convicted of the murder and were hanged at Kajang Prison in 2001.
Zaman Khan notched up other successes such as busting secret societies, which had plotted the return of communism in the late 1970s,
He often talked about the day in 1981 when he was asked to kick out his friend Karpal Singh from the Penang State Assembly after Karpal was suspended.
He once told an interviewer that he experienced highs and lows throughout his career in the force, citing the withdrawal of a Datukship a day before the awards ceremony. “I sort of cried,” he said.
Since then, he has been conferred a string of state and federal titles, including Tan Sri.
At motivational talks, Zaman Khan, who witnessed the lowering of the Union Jack for the last time in the country in 1957, used to talk about his teenage years when people mingled freely, something he said augured well for the country.
Zaman Khan also alluded to sports being a nation builder. In his youth he played rugby for Selangor All-Blues, Penang Blues and PDRM, and was also president of the Malaysian Rugby Union for 15 years.