SEEKING EXPLANATION: Rosemah (right) and her son in Sarikei Hospital.
SARIKEI: A single mother lodged a report at the police station here to urge the police to investigate how life-threatening injuries were inflicted on her son when he was in Sri Aman about two weeks ago.
She wanted to know if they were sustained during a brawl as alleged and compounded by mistreatment by the police at Sri Aman while he was placed in their custody overnight on Jan 13.
“I want to know how the injuries were inflicted on my son and urge the Sri Aman police to investigate my report accordingly,” said Rosemah Abdullah when seeking the assistance of The Borneo Post to bring up the case to the attention of the relevant authorities yesterday.
She explained that she was prompted to seek the assistance of the press as no action had been taken by Sri Aman police on the report she lodged through the Sarikei Police Station on Jan 20.
According to her, when she made the report, she was assured by the recording personnel that the report was to be relayed to Sri Aman police for their prompt action.
She related that her 25-year-old son Fatharuddin Ikman Redzuan went to Sri Aman with a male friend, who is also their neighbour in Jalan Pinang Laka residential area here, on the morning of Jan 13.
Riding pillion on his friend’s motorcycle, he and his friend were said to have arrived at another friend’s house in Kampung Muhibbah, Sri Aman around noon that day.
As admitted by her son, he was well treated as the family’s guest till late in the afternoon when an argument erupted due to a misunderstanding, and a fist fight ensued between him and his friend in the house.
“Being a guest, my son told me that he had presented himself properly in front of the host family but when his friend punched him, he had to defend himself and when several other family members later joined in to beat him up with wood, he was simply helpless.”
As this was her side of the story based on what her son had narrated, Rosemah preferred to leave the case to the police to investigate from all angles and take appropriate action in accordance with the law.
While pondering how the life-threatening injuries had been inflicted on her son, she questioned the manner Sri Aman police handled the case.
“I came to know about the case after several local policemen came to my house on the morning of Jan 14, informing me that my son was detained in Sri Aman police lockup.
“I rushed to Sri Aman to check and on arrival there around noon, my son was still in the lockup,” she said.
She further said that her son’s behaviour was indeed strangely furious then, convincing her that he had been rightfully detained following a report of rampage he allegedly committed at his friend’s house as claimed by Sri Aman Police.
Believing that her son could have been ‘possessed’, she brought him back to seek traditional treatment but till now wondered why her son had been released unconditionally despite the serious nature of the offence allegedly committed.
“Neither did I sign any document to bail out my son nor did I receive any of my son’s personal belongings including a cellular phone, two Quantum Fusion Excel pendants which I mentioned in a police report I made here on Jan 20,” she said.
According to her, after receiving a report relayed by their Sarikei counterparts, Sri Aman police requested her to meet them to have her statement recorded but she could not make it at that time as she had to take care of her son who was undergoing treatment at Sarikei Hospital.
She claimed that although she was told that Sri Aman police had sought the assistance of the local police to record her statement, no one had come to see her thus far, while insisting that it would be proper for personnel from Sri Aman who had the background of the case to come to Sarikei Hospital to get her son’s medical report as well as to record her statement and that of her son’s.
She also related that her son had been complaining of chest pain since he was brought back from Sri Aman but it was only on Jan 19 that she brought him for treatment at the local polyclinic where from an X-ray, the medical officer discovered injury (blood clot) in her son’s lung and immediately referred him to the local hospital.
It was the discovery of the internal injury that aroused her suspicion of foul play by certain parties in Sri Aman which prompted her to demand the authority concerned to conduct a thorough investigation, she said, stressing that she had full confidence in the police to investigate her report, be they from here, Sri Aman or even Bukit Aman.
“Before that, I suspected that my son was ‘possessed’ as he was behaving in a strange and furious manner, and brought him to as far as Bintulu to seek traditional treatment, but the possibility was dismissed by the traditional medicine practitioner,” she said.