Pressure group moots new law for coroners after open verdict in Australian grandma’s mystery death

KUALA LUMPUR, May 17 — Human rights watchdog Citizens Against Enforced Disappearances (CAGED) today revived calls for Malaysia to enact a Coroners Act to regulate investigations into deaths following the open verdict in the recent inquest of Australian Annapuranee Jenkins.

The group also called on Home Minister Datuk Seri Saifuddin Nasution and de facto Law Minister Datuk Seri Azalina Othman Said to set up a commission to review how the police handle reports of missing persons and sudden death reports.

CAGED described the Jenkins inquest and the open verdict as a mockery and a travesty of justice, noting that the court inquiry into her death was only held “because Anna’s family, supported by the Parliament of South Australia and the Government of Australia, insisted that her disappearance must be investigated in accordance with law. If not for their insistence, no inquest would have been held”.

“That’s the first thing to fix. Coroners must comply with the law. If they don’t, they must be made to pay a price,” the group’s spokesman Rama Ramanathan said in a statement.

Rama claimed the method of reporting and the way evidence was gathered in Jenkins’ inquest was poor compared to the 2021 court inquiry into Nora Anne Quoirin, a French-Irish teenager who was found dead while holidaying with her family in a Negeri Sembilan forest resort.

According to Rama, the coroner in Jenkins’ case failed to ensure the assisting officers from the Attorney General's Chambers had gathered proper evidence, failed to ensure the witnesses were scheduled so that evidence could be effectively and efficiently adduced and allowed wild allegations from witnesses to be made without supporting evidence.

He highlighted the shoddy investigation done by the police when they didn't collect information such as phone records, Jenkins alleged diary or journal and video records.

Rama also said the coroner didn't press the police for proper evidence and condoned their lackadaisical attitude.

“The inquest was a travesty because the coroner didn’t prepare a written decision to explain her rationale for accepting or rejecting key pieces of evidence, especially since there were glaringcontradictions between police testimony and the testimony of Anna’s son.

“The public is left wondering why the Nora Anne Quoirin decision is 111 pages, but the Penang coroner wrote nothing for Anna and merely delivered an oral verdict in three minutes. The coroner failed to take judicial notice of the string of police failures in the handling of the case.

“These failures recall those documented by the Human Rights Commission of Malaysia (Suhakam) in the cases of Raymond Koh, Amri Che Mat and Joshua and Ruth Hilmy,” he added.

He questioned why the coroner in Jenkins’ case did not conduct the inquest in English unlike the coroner in Quorin’s case, even though both deceased and their families were foreigners.

He also asserted that the coroner in Jenkins’ case had other precedents to follow and should have provided a written verdict instead of an oral one.

“From the above, it should be clear that the public have strong grounds for calling the inquest a farce, mockery, travesty.

“We call on Home Minister Saifuddin and Law Minister Azalina to set up a commission to review how the police handle reports of missing persons and sudden death reports.

“We call on them to produce a white paper to describe the problems which need to be fixed through better resourcing or supervision and the problems which need to be fixed through revision of legislation,” Rama said.

Coroner Norsalha Hamzah declared an open verdict in Jenkins’ inquest last Friday.

The Australian grandmother’s partial remains were found nearly three years after her 2017 abrupt disappearance while on holiday in Penang.

Norshalha said she could not determine the cause of death, the nature of death, or find any criminal element based on the testimonies presented to the Coroner’s Court.

“There were insufficient evidence to establish the facts of the case,” she said in her ruling.

She said that although a post mortem report confirmed that the remains found were of Annapuranee’s, they were incomplete and the cause of death was listed as undetermined.

Annapuranee, 65, was in Penang on a short holiday with her husband in December 2017 when she vanished on December 13 while on the way to visit her mother at the Little Sisters of the Poor home for the elderly.

Some of her bones and belongings were found on June 24 in 2020 at a construction site near where she was last seen.