Amend the law to cover deaths in Immigration Detention Places, Drug Rehab Centres, etc...

Amend the law to cover deaths in Immigration Detention Places, Drug Rehab Centres, etc...

There really is a need to amend  the Criminal Procedure Code, to extend inquiries of a death of a person to Immigration Detention Centres, Drug Rehabilitation Centres, Henry Gurney School,... i.e. all places of detention. Now, section 334 confines itself only to 'custody of police'(which would include police lock-ups), psychiatric hospitals or prisons...when there are so many other places of detention in Malaysia.

It should also be extended to include custody of the RELA, Immigration enforcement officers, and other enforcement officers...

What about persons in the custody of other private persons, who also do have the right to arrest persons... 

Of late, there have been a lot of cases of death in Immigration Detention Centres.... and the current law about 'inquiries of death', imposes no obligation on the person in charge of Immigration Detention Centres to  "... immediately give intimation of such death to the nearest Magistrate..."

INQUIRIES OF DEATHS

334.  Inquiry into cause of death of a person in custody of police or in any asylum.

When any person dies while in the custody of the police or in a psychiatric hospital or prison, the officer who had the custody of that person or was in charge of that psychiatric hospital or prison, as the case may be, shall immediately give intimation of such death to the nearest Magistrate, and the Magistrate or some other Magistrate shall, in the case of a death in the custody of the police, and in other cases may, if he thinks expedient, hold an inquiry into the cause of death. - sec 334, Criminal Procedure Code (Act 953)