KUALA LUMPUR, April 2 ― Just 7 per cent of complaints against the police force between 2005 and 2012 reached a courtroom while over half the cases are yet to be fully investigated, according to an international rights group

The Human Rights Watch (HRW) in its “No Answers, No Apology: Police Abuses and Accountability” report released today disclosed that of the 4,334 reports lodged from January 2005 to May 2012, 68 per cent are “still pending investigations”.

Of the total complaints, 32 per cent or 1,361 investigation papers were recommended to the Attorney-General’s Chambers (AGC) for prosecution, with only 325 making it to court. 

According to the data retrieved from Bukit Aman’s Criminal Investigation Division, the AGC wrote off the remaining 1,036 cases as requiring no further action (NFA) due to “lack of evidence”.

From the case referred to the prosecution, HRW said these were “often drug-related offenses, corruption, extortion or robbery”.

“These numbers do not provide much clarity, including because they do not distinguish between cases in which civilians complain of police abuse, and cases of police corruption and other crimes,” stated the report.

“The government’s failure to maintain properly-defined statistics on civilian complaints of abuse also inhibits its ability to identify underlying causes of police misconduct,” it added.

On June 26 last year, the Home Ministry revealed that 231 individuals died in police custody between January  2000 and May 2013 but Minister Datuk Seri Ahmad Zahid Hamidi denied these were caused by police brutality, insisting most were the result of medical complications.

According to police data, 196 deaths were caused by illnesses like heart attacks, asthma and HIV; 29 from hanging; two due to fights among inmates; and another two inmates died by slipping on the floor of the lock-ups.

As government data relies on post-mortem examinations by government pathologists to establish the proximate cause of death, HRW said that the reports “typically do not address serious questions such as whether the death was a result of police mistreatment or could have been prevented with timely medical care”.

Citing reports of previous custodial deaths, the group claimed the reliability of autopsy reports by government pathologists was open to question.

“In the case of A. Kugan, 23, who died shortly after being severely beaten at the Taipan police station, in Subang Jaya, Selangor on January 20, 2009, the first autopsy concluded that Kugan had died of “pulmonary edema” (fluid in the lung).

“This conclusion was disputed by a second post-mortem, which found that Kugan’s death was caused by acute renal (kidney) failure due to blunt trauma to skeletal muscles,” it said, noting that the case was only reclassified as murder following a public outcry.

Similar circumstances were faced by the family of Mohammad Ramdan Yusuf, in January 2010, when the first autopsy declared that he had died of cardiac arrest with evidence of “blunt force trauma to the limbs” five days after he was arrested.

No inquest has been held, however, to determine the nature of Mohammad Ramdan’s death despite evidence of bruises and bleeding on his body.

In its report, the HRW added that an independent commission tasked solely to receive and investigate complaints on police misconduct and abuse was necessary to curb such alleged abuses.

In 2005, a royal commission of inquiry on the police headed by former Chief Justice Tun Mohamed Dzaiddin Abdullah recommended an Independent Police Complaints and Misconduct Commission (IPCMC)to monitor abuse of power in the police force.

The proposal was met by vehement resistance from the police and was never implemented.

Putrajaya later formed the Enforcement Agency Integrity Commission (EAIC) in 2011 to investigate complaints of misconduct against the police and 18 other enforcement agencies, saying it could serve the role of the IPCMC.

But the EAIC’s lack of power to prosecute the cases it investigates later led it to be labelled “toothless.”