70 abducted by ‘policemen’ have vanished

Patrick Lee | June 30, 2011-FMT

More than 70 people have gone missing after they were taken away by 'policemen', never to be seen again, Pakatan MPs said.

KUALA LUMPUR: More than 70 people are believed to have been abducted by “policemen”, Pakatan Rakyat MPs alleged. DAP Ipoh Barat MP M Kulasegaran said that these people were last seen led away by plainclothes “policemen”.

“Something dreadful has happened to them while on the way to police stations… they were led away in the company of people armed with the stuff of law enforcement,” he told reporters in the Parliament lobby yesterday.

Kulasegaran said that these people then disappeared, never to be seen again. He added that more than 70 separate police reports have been lodged in the last eight months with regard to the matter.

In one example, he said that “two or three men” appeared at a Gunong Rapat house near Ipoh last week.

“Claiming they were police personnel … they produced police identity papers, carried handcuffs and were armed with firearms. But they were not in uniform and arrived in unmarked vehicles,” said Kulasegaran.

He heard about the case from the couple’s family members. When he inquired about the couple’s fate at the Ipoh police station, he found out that the police did not call them in for questioning.

“They had no dealings with the police… No connections whatsoever!” said Kulasegaran.

Similar circumstances

PKR Kapar MP S Manickavasagam said that he knew of a Subang Jaya businessman who disappeared under similar circumstances in June.

“His family came to my office, and we sent a memorandum to the Inspector-General of Police (Ismail Omar), lodged three police reports, but until now he’s (still) missing,” he said.

Manickavasagam added that the businessman had not left the country as his passport was still in his house.

He added that he had heard of four similar cases through DAP Puchong MP Gobind Singh Deo.

Kulasegaran filed a motion on the matter on Monday. However, it was rejected in Dewan Rakyat Speaker Pandikar Amin Mulia’s Chambers yesterday.

In a letter to Kulasegaran, Pandikar Amin said that the police were investigating the matter, and did not consider the motion as urgent for debate.

A disappointed Kulasegaran said: “Contrary to the views of the Speaker, the motion should have been debated as the police could have explained the factors… why to date over 70 people have gone missing.”

“At first, we thought it was just a normal (case of) missing people. But many of them are in their 40s or their 50s.”

He suspected that many of these missing people were most likely murdered. He said that the police were also not serious in investigating these cases, saying: “When we went and lodged the police report, they themselves cannot synchronise.”

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