Teo’s surau visit: ‘Police probe a comedy’

ARCHIVES 2010

By admin-s On Oct 5, 2010

(FMT) The police investigation into Serdang MP Teo Nie Ching’s controversial surau visit has been called a “complete comedy” that flew in the face of Prime Minister Najib Tun Razak’s 1Malaysia concept. Teo’s DAP colleague and lawyer Gobind Singh Deo told FMT today the authorities were sending a signal that anyone who went to a place of worship risked being prosecuted.

“That just goes against what 1Malaysia is supposed to stand for. What she (Teo) did was obviously geared towards fostering greater relationship and understanding of religions,” said Gobind, who is Puchong MP.

But what vexed Gobind more was that the police could not even tell Teo and himself what sort of offences Teo were being investigated for.

“When I asked them, they simply said a police report was lodged against Teo. But they could not answer me why they were asking for Teo’s statement. If a complaint or police report doesn’t form the basis of any criminal charge, the police shouldn’t look to her for answers. That’s ‘fishing’ for a case, which isn’t allowed,” said Gobind.

He added that the police should not even be investigating this (report).

“Section 112 of the Criminal Procedure Code says that a person need not answer questions which incriminate them, but in this case, how do you know what incriminates if you don’t know what your offence is?” asked Gobind.

He said police would ordinarily call witnesses after they have weighed a police report and gauged if it fell under any criminal offence, not the other way around.

“If there were no offences, they shouldn’t be calling people just to ‘understand what happened’,” said Gobind.