KUALA LUMPUR, 15 July 2009: The High Court here today issued a temporary order for all documents and post-mortem samples in relation to A Kugan, who died in police custody, to be stored in the original form.
Justice Datuk Ghazali Cha issued the order after allowing an application by Kugan’s mother, N Indra, for the documents, and tissue, blood and fluid samples to be stored until the court hears an application to strike out the police search warrant.
“I am applying for the status quo of the material to be restored. The post-mortem being carried out at the Pathology Department of the Universiti Malaya Medical Centre (PPUM) could not be completed because the police had seized the materials,” Indra’s counsel, N Surendran, submitted.
The court postponed to 30 July the hearing of the application to strike out the search warrant issued on 6 April.
The date was fixed after Surendran applied for a postponement to enable him to prepare a reply to a written submission put in by the prosecution this morning.
Deputy public prosecutor Idham Abdul Ghani told the court that the prosecution would file an objection to the application to strike out the search warrant as the court had no authority to hear and decide on it.
The application was also legally restricted as the seizure (of the documents and samples) was authorised for police investigations, he added.
On 28 May, Indra filed a suit against the police for seizing documents and samples related to Kugan’s second autopsy from the PPUM’s Pathology Department chief’s office on 6 April.
Kugan, 22, who was arrested in connection with the theft of luxury cars, died in police custody on 20 Jan. — Bernama
