KUALA LUMPUR: The High Court has ordered the government to pay RM194,170 to the family of a man who hanged himself in a Malaysian Maritime Enforcement Agency (MMEA) lockup, ruling that his death was caused by serious negligence while in custody.
Judge Datuk Alice Loke Yee Ching found that officers failed to take reasonable steps to prevent the suicide of M. Thinagaran while he was on remand for a drug trafficking investigation.
The court allowed the negligence claim filed by the deceased’s wife, R. Tenaswari, and father, K. Madhavan, who sued the government and two MMEA officers, as co-administrators of Thinagaran’s estate.
Loke said authorities created the very conditions that enabled Thinagaran to end his life.
“The deceased hung the extra pair of pants from a grill on the ceiling, which had been installed after a previous escape by a detainee.
“Unfortunately, the grill and the pants became the very means for the deceased to harm himself.
“There was no reason to have provided the deceased with the extra pair of pants.
“The presence of the grill ought to have raised a red flag.
“The defendants obviously overlooked this and should have taken steps to avoid exposing the deceased to danger,” she said in her written judgment dated July 28.
She said there was a clear breach of duty as the deceased was given an extra pair of trousers in a lockup with a ceiling grill, where the risk of suicide among detainees was foreseeable.
The court also found that the MMEA lockup in Klang was not a gazetted detention facility and that its closed-circuit television (CCTV) system was only monitored once every hour.
“Monitoring at hourly intervals defeats the purpose of having CCTV.
“It is meant for continuous monitoring. Had there not been a lapse in monitoring, the suicide could have been prevented.
“The lack of closer monitoring caused the officers on duty to miss the entire series of actions taken by the deceased just prior to his suicide,” the judge said.
The court dismissed the government’s defence that Thinagaran’s death was unforeseeable or that his act of suicide broke the chain of causation.
“His death was the very event their duty was directed at.
“It is therefore not open to the defendants to contend that the actions of the deceased broke the chain of causation.
“Persons in custody are susceptible to mental stress.
“They are vulnerable to depression, and hence suicidal impulses are not unforeseeable.”
The court also rejected the argument that Thinagaran was contributorily negligent, saying he was under immense psychological pressure from facing a capital offence and that it would be unfair to blame him for his own death.
The court awarded RM6,370 in special damages, RM5,000 for funeral expenses, RM10,000 for bereavement, and RM172,800 for loss of earnings.
“It also awarded RM30,000 in costs to the plaintiffs.
Lawyer M. Manoharan appeared for the plaintiffs, while senior federal counsel Siti Syakimah Ibrahim represented the defendants.
© New Straits Times Press (M) Bhd
