Kuala Lumpur, June 26 (Inditop.com) A Malaysian Indian woman having seven children has petitioned parliament to get the government to order an inquest into the death of her husband while in police custody.
M. Manimalai, 40, submitted a memorandum to Deputy Home Minister Jelaing Mersat alleging that her husband A. Gnanapragasam, 53, had told her that he had been beaten up by the police inquiring into a housebreaking case. Gnanapragasam had been found dead in a police lock-up earlier this month.
He had bruises on his eye when she last met him, The Star newspaper quoted her as saying Friday.
Gnanaprasagam, a wireman, was arrested June 10 for allegedly breaking into a house.
“He told me the police had beaten him up. He said he had complained to the magistrate about the beating but no action was taken,” she said.
“A few days after he was detained by the police, he was dead. Who is going to take care of us now?” she asked media at the parliament lobby.
Two lawmakers, ethnic Chinese legislator Elizabeth Wong and ethnic Indian parliamentarian M. Sivarasa, flanked Manimalai as she spoke to the media.
A post-mortem examination by Universiti Malaya Medical Centre pathologist Prashant Samberkar found that Gnanaprasagam died of “toxaemia secondary to spontaneous peritonitis” – poison in the blood from bacterial infection in the intestines.
Sivarasa said that although Mani?malai would not dispute the findings of the post-mortem examination, she wanted to know why her husband had not been given care while in detention.
He said that under the Criminal Procedure Code, an inquest should be held immediately after a detainee’s death.
“However, in Malaysia, the inquest is usually held months or even years after the death. We want an inquest to be held immediately,” he said, adding that the probe into Gnanaprasagam’s death should be carried out by an independent body and not by the police.
Ethnic Indians, a bulk of them Tamils, form eight percent of Malaysia’s 28 million population.
