KUALA LUMPUR, July 17 — Sacked PKR Youth leader Haziq Abdullah Abdul Aziz will remain with police three more days for investigation over a sex video purportedly linked to the economic affairs minister after the High Court maintained his remand order today.
Haziq and five others were challenging a lower court’s six-day remand order until July 20 for the investigation.
High Court judge Collin Lawrence Sequerah dismissed their bid to have the entire remand order quashed, but reduced the number of days that the five — excluding Haziq — would be detained for.
The judge noted that it would be impossible for the five others to be charged under Section 377B of the Penal Code, which covers the offence of voluntarily committing carnal intercourse against the order of nature.
“I therefore vary the magistrate’s order that the remand order for all detained except Haziq Abdullah be reduced from six days to four days.
“So the remand period for Haziq Abdullah remains for six days,” the judge said.
Today is the third day of remand for all six.
Lawyer Ramesh Sivakumar led the defence team for Haziq and four of those detained, with the other lawyers on the team being Sivahnanthan Ragava, Vince Tan, Nurul Afiqah and Goik Kenzin.
One of the six detained was represented separately by lawyer Ashok Athimulan.
Haziq and the five others were arrested on Sunday night, and were on Monday brought before a magistrate who granted a six-day remand order until July 20.
The police are investigating them under Section 377B of the Penal Code which covers the offence of voluntarily committing carnal intercourse against the order of nature, Section 292 of the Penal Code over the dissemination of obscene material and Section 233 of the Communications and Multimedia Act over the alleged improper use of network facilities.
The reason why the High Court today cut short the remand period for five individuals other than Haziq is due to the lesser nature of the offences for which they are being investigated.
Section 377B, for which Haziq Abdullah is believed to be under investigation, carries a maximum 20-year jail term and whipping while Section 292 is punishable by a maximum three-year jail term or fine or both, and Section 233 is punishable with a maximum RM50,000 fine or a maximum one-year jail term or both.
Under Section 117(2) of the Criminal Procedure Code, an individual who investigated over an offence punishable by less than 14 years’ jail may be remanded for a maximum four days for the first application and a maximum three days for the extension.
Under the same provision, an individual probed over an offence punishable by more than 14 years’ jail may be remanded for a maximum seven days for both the first and second remand applications.
The sex videos leaked online and being investigated depict two men engaged in sexual acts.
Haziq previously confessed to being one of the two individuals in the sex videos, while PKR president Datuk Seri Azmin Ali has denied the videos as a ploy to harm his political career.
Earlier, Ramesh also said there was a legal mistake in the remand proceedings where the police allegedly made a general remand application for all six without mentioning their individual circumstances, while the magistrate had also not considered whether further detention was necessary and reasonable for each of the case individually.
Ramesh also said the lawyers for those under remand had not seen the police physically handing over the investigation diary to the magistrate before she decided on their remand, further noting that the minutes of the remand proceedings and the magistrate’s decision did not refer to such an investigation diary.
“It can be deduced that the magistrate did not address her mind to the matters mentioned in the investigation diary when granting remand.
“The law makes it very clear, the investigation diary is a very important concept of remand proceedings, failure to provide investigation diary is fatal,” he argued.
Ramesh argued that the investigation officer’s alleged failure to produce the investigation diary to the magistrate is an “irregularity”, asking the High Court to set aside the remand order and release them immediately.
This is due to the procedures under Section 117(1) of the Criminal Procedure Code, where the police has to “transmit” a copy of the entries in the investigation diary to the magistrate and produce a person before the magistrate to seek for the further detention of an arrested individual beyond 24 hours for investigation.
Ramesh later argued that even if the investigation diary had been filed electronically, the question remains on whether the magistrate had looked at and considered the contents of the investigation diary before her decision, adding that this would have to be checked via the minutes of proceedings.
Deputy public prosecutor Mohd Radzi Abdul Razak had among other things said the police had submitted the investigation diary’s content together with the application for the remand of the six individuals electronically, arguing that this meant that the magistrate had directed her mind to the investigation diary before her remand decision.
Mohd Radzi later said all six individuals could be charged under Section 377B, a possibility which the High Court judge later rejected.
The High Court judge also ruled that the Section 117 requirements regarding the investigation diary had been complied with, following its electronic filing.
