Nine months after the death of A Kugan in police custody, one policeman V Navindran was charged today at the Petaling Jaya Sessions Court with causing hurt to the 23-year-old detainee.

He claimed trial to two counts of causing “grievous hurt” in trying to extract a confession on two separate occasions. Alternatively, Navindran was also charged with causing “hurt”.

If found guilty of causing “grievous hurt”, he is liable to a fine and a jail sentence of up to 10 years, while for “causing hurt”, the jail term is up to seven years.

Sessions judge Aslam Zainuddin set bail at RM10,000 for both charges and fixed Nov 5^th for mention.

Navindran, wearing a blue long-sleeved shirt and blue denim jeans, arrived in court about 9.25am.

Attorney-general Abdul Gani Patail in a press statement yesterday said Navindran would be charged under Section 331 of the Penal Code for voluntarily causing grievous hurt to extort confession from the deceased and alternatively Section 330 for voluntarily causing hurt to extort a confession from the deceased.

No murder charge

According to Abdul Gani, out of 92 witnesses questioned by the police, four identified Navindran as the one who had caused injuries to the deceased on two different occasions.

“On both occasions, the suspect was said to have beaten the deceased with a rubber hose and four days later Kugan met his death,” he said.

Abdul Gani also took pains to explain why Navindran could not be charged for murder but a lesser charge of causing hurt.

“There is no evidence that the deceased suffered an instant death. Instead, the deceased died four days after the alleged beating. Therefore, there was a wide gap in between and a charge of murder could not be preferred against the suspect.

“The finding of the medical report did not show that the deceased died due to the injuries suffered by him. But it was the result of acute myocarditis, a viral infection of the heart,” he said.

Kugan died on Jan 20 at the USJ Taipan police station, five days after he was arrested.

Welcome to Citizen Journalism Malaysia. This is your first post. Edit or delete it, then start blogging!