Pathologist testifies no signs of defensive wounds on Adib’s body

SHAH ALAM, March 28 — A forensic pathologist told the Coroner’s Court today it was impossible for Muhammad Adib Mohd Kassim not to retaliate if the fireman had been manhandled.

Hospital Kuala Lumpur medical forensics department officer Dr Ahmad Hafizam Hasmi, who had conducted an autopsy on Adib, pointed out that Adib was a trained and well-built uniformed personnel who would have reacted if he was pulled out of the Emergency Medical Rescue Service (EMRS) vehicle forcefully.

“This self-defence response would have also caused even more injuries as he defended himself from the violence.

“I am taking into account that in this case the situation had been chaotic, but there was no self-defence or retaliatory injuries discovered during my examination of the deceased,” he told Judge Rofiah Mohamad who is sitting as coroner for the inquest here.

Dr Ahmad Hafizam was responding to lawyer Syazlin Mansor, representing the Housing and Local Government Ministry and the Fire Department, who asked him to explain his theory on the circumstances surrounding claims that Adib was dragged out of the front passenger seat of the EMRS van and assaulted.

“That possibility is impossible. Even though one is roughly pulled, a conscious person has the consciousness to defend himself,” he said.

Dr Ahmad Hafizam had previously maintained in his testimony that his examination of Adib’s remains did not uncover any sign that the fireman had been physically assaulted during the riot.

He said this theory was supported by both his autopsy and Hospital Kuala Lumpur’s forensic clinical examination of Adib confirming there were no visible grip marks on the young man’s body.

He also ruled out that possibility that Adib was struck by a reversing fire engine, due to the existing and unique injuries pattern on Adib’s fractured rear rib cage.

“We are very sure that the fractures were caused by an object that is upright, hard and thin following our post-mortem examination to determine the cause of the injuries suffered by the deceased.

“Subsequently, based on the examinations conducted on both EMRS van and the fire engine provided to us by the authorities during the reconstruction process, we initially discovered six similar objects of such nature on the fire engine’s rear,” he said.

He then said the team ruled out the six objects because they did not possess the thin structure criteria, which they found to be a mismatch with the vertical abrasion marks on Adib’s back where his ribs were fractured.

“We then found a part of the EMRS front passenger van door that is protruding which provided us the most likely possibility that matched the sequence of the injuries sustained,” he said.

The hearing resumes at 9.30am tomorrow.

Muhammad Adib was critically injured in the early morning of November 27 after he and his team members from the Subang Jaya fire station responded to an emergency call at the Seafield Sri Maha Mariamman Temple where a riot was taking place.

The fireman was taken to Subang Jaya Medical Centre and was later transferred to the National Heart Institute (IJN) for further treatment, where he succumbed to his wounds on December 17.