KUALA LUMPUR, Dec 11 — The police should immediately and compulsorily record the statements of all police officers involved in the November 24 shooting which killed three men in Durian Tunggal, Melaka, the lawyers for the trio’s families said.
In a statement late last night, the families’ lawyers Rajesh Nagarajan and Sachpreetraj Singh claimed that the police “have openly admitted that the investigation has so far entirely excluded the shooters”, since the police have yet to record any statement from any police personnel involved.
The lawyers said this is based on the police’s latest statement, which confirmed that the police have so far recorded statements from a total of seven persons, namely three family members of the deceased and four medical officers.
The lawyers claim that failing to record statements from the police officers involved in the fatal shooting “compromises the integrity of the entire investigative process”.
The lawyers said for any lawful use of force investigations, the first and most critical step is to record statements from the officers who discharged their weapons.
They said failure to do so nearly two weeks after the November 24 shooting raises serious concerns of evidence contamination, narrative coordination, institutional bias and systemic obstruction of justice.
Apart from demanding the immediate probe on the police officers involved, the lawyers also demanded for “public disclosure of the chain of command and operational justification”, and “independent oversight by external bodies to prevent institutional whitewashing”.
“Until these minimum standards are met, this investigation cannot be considered credible, legitimate, or lawful,” the lawyers said.
Yesterday, family members of the three men had their statements recorded at Bukit Aman to assist in the police’s investigations, with one of the family members also giving a mobile phone believed to contain an audio recording to the police.
CyberSecurity Malaysia also aided the police in taking a voice sample from the person who gave the mobile phone.
Previously, police had on December 6 received a compact disc from one of the family members, which is believed to contain an audio recording of a phone conversation between one of the men who was shot dead and his wife before the shooting took place.
On November 24, national news agency Bernama reported Melaka police chief Datuk Dzulkhairi Mukhtar as saying that police had shot dead three men believed to be part of the Durian Tunggal gang.
He said the Durian Tunggal gang has actively been involved in crime since 2024, with losses worth RM1.35 million from robberies with 20 cases in Melaka, one case each in Negeri Sembilan and Selangor.
Dzulkhairi had said that one of the three men had attacked a policemen with a machete and left that policemen seriously injured on the left arm, and that the police had to shoot in self-defence.
The families of the three men — who were aged 21, 24 and 29 — have reportedly disputed the police’s account of what happened.
