High Court frees Cradle Fund CEO’s sis-in-law and hubby

SHAH ALAM: The High Court here has released a married couple who were remanded over the death of Cradle Fund Sdn Bhd chief executive officer Nazrin Hassan.

Justice Datuk Ab Karim Ab Rahman issued the order after allowing an application by lawyer L.S. Leonard who represented the couple.

Nazrin’s sister-in-law and her husband were ordered remanded for four days by magistrate’s court assistant registrar Hairul Azhar Mohd Ishak Monday.

The remand order against the 39-year-old woman and her husband, 41, was supposed to expire tomorrow.

In his decision yesterday, Ab Karim said the four-day remand against the couple was too long and that the police did not provide strong grounds to detain them.

“To remand them for that period, there must be relevant and solid grounds. Any further action, as stated in the grounds given by the police to remand the couple, can be done without the presence of the suspects.

“As such, the application for a review against the remand order issued by the Petaling Jaya magistrate’s court (assistant) registrar is revised and both of them are ordered to be released after office hours at 5pm,” he said.

Earlier, Leonard submitted that there was no necessity for both his clients to be held in remand since they had cooperated with the police.

“Among the grounds given by the police to remand my clients is to investigate whether they were responsible for spreading the message that said Nazrin’s death was due to a handphone explosion, when they (police) knew it was not them who did it,” said Leonard, who was assisted by lawyer Hisyam Teh Poh Teik.

Deputy public prosecutor Ahmad Nazneen Zulkifli submitted that the magistrate court’s decision was valid and in line with Section 117 of the Criminal Procedure Code.

Prior to this, police also detained Nazrin’s wife, her ex-husband and two teenagers to facilitate investigations into the case.

Nazrin, who died in a fire at his home on June 14, was found with 30% burns on the upper floor of his double-storey house.

The police reclassified the case as murder following a forensic investigation by the Fire and Rescue Department.