Time lost in Teoh Beng Hock case
IT is heartening to note that the Attorney General will have another look at Teoh Beng Hock’s (TBH) death but it will definitely be an arduous task as it has been more than a decade since his death.
Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission (MACC) officers were held accountable but no one has been identified as criminally responsible.
What went wrong? Why is it that the criminal justice system is unable to deliver the goods?
We can trace the source of the problem to the initial classification of the case as a sudden death report. If the Officer in Charge of the Police District had a more aggressive assessment at the scene of the crime, and even if there was only an iota of suspicion, he would have, with the concurrence of the Officer in Charge of Criminal Investigation, classified it as a criminal offence.
This would have enabled investigators to use all the powers of investigation available to them under Chapter 13 of the Criminal Procedure Code, including the powers of arrest, detention, further detention, and interrogation. The failure of this assessment and underclassification of the case at the outset is why we are in this predicament.
The suspects were obviously all within the MACC building. It needed the Criminal Investigation Department (CID) to detain the officer who officially had custody of TBH, together with all those who came into contact with him just before his death. In this case, the first 48 hours of investigation were crucial in either identifying the perpetrators or exonerating them. The main tool of investigation for this case was to arrest immediately the suspects, detain them, apply for further detention, and interrogate them separately using trained investigators from the technical aids branch of the police. The probability of solving the case would have been much higher.
Normally, investigators can narrow down the person or persons responsible from the similarities and contradictions of their statements. The delay in applying this approach would allow suspects, if any, to collaborate and synchronise their stories to ensure that all give the same version of false evidence, if that is the case. Time is always of the essence in such cases. The longer the delay in the arrest, the more difficult it becomes to establish the truth.
Confidence and the experience of balancing among public interest, rights, and the gathering of evidence must be part of the natural instincts of an investigator. An instinctive hunch should be allowed to take its course – although there is the downside of trampling on the rights of the suspects. A good and experienced investigator honed in the skills of recognising his gut feeling can sense who the perpetrators are, especially when they are in close proximity with the deceased around the time of his death.
Valuable time was lost in pursuing the right action when investigators at the scene of the death and immediately after seemed to be more concerned with providing damage control for the MACC rather than ensuring that justice was swiftly done.
At least from this case we should try to understand how intricately balanced an investigation is in serious offences, especially when it is crucial to take immediate action to arrest, detain and interrogate suspects. Generally, we investigate first and arrest later but, unfortunately, this case did not fall into that general category. The more the criminal justice system understands how the push and pull of the investigative arm works, the better it can deliver.
Enhance the investigative powers of the police but balance that with firm and effective checks and balances. Interrogations and recording of confessions can be made transparent through audio and visual channels. Raise the confidence and morale of investigators so they can make an authoritative call in gathering admissible evidence. They must be given the legal space and time to use all the tools of investigation.
But come down hard on those who abuse these powers. The right balance must be struck if we are not to have another TBH-like case.