Salhan K Ahmad
Malaysiakini
Jul 13, 11

Closure appears to be slow in coming for the family of Baharudin Ahmad, the sole fatality allegedly linked to the Bersih 2.0 rally last Saturday.

The police recently claimed that a preliminary report based on the post-mortem on the 59-year-old taxi driver indicated that he had died of heart failure.

This however is not conclusive enough to satisfy his wife, Rosni Malan, and the family.

As it is, Baharudin’s family was only given a letter of consent to take his body for burial last Sunday without any explanation for his death.

Rosni, 55, said there has been so much speculation surrounding the events that lead to her husband’s death, that she and her family do not know what to believe.

“I still don’t know if (Baharudin) died because of tear gas or something else. I don’t know whether or not he was chased by the police.

“People have a lot of stories about what happened, but I was not there,” she said when met at her home in Keramat, Kuala Lumpur.

It is understood that Baharudin was declared dead at around 5.30pm at Hospital Kuala Lumpur after he was brought in by ambulance from Avenue K – located across the street from Kuala Lumpur City Centre (KLCC) – where he allegedly collapsed.

There have been varied accounts splashed across social networking sites and the Internet of what lead to Baharudin’s death, with some claiming that he collapsed after complications due to exposure to tear gas.

Kuala Lumpur acting police chief Amar Singh however denied they had fired tear gas at protesters near KLCC, claiming instead that the preliminary post-mortem report showed that the deceased’s heart, which had three blocked arteries, could not take the strain after the many kilometers of marching and running away from riot police.

It’s now a waiting game

Rosni complained that their eldest daughter, Dr Mirza, had repeatedly gone to HKL over the past two days to get a copy of the post-mortem report, but to no avail.

She remained sceptical over the police’s claim that her husband died of a heart attack, stressing that it was only based on a preliminary report of the post-mortem carried out at HKL – which she was told was conducted between 11pm and 3am that same night.

Mirza, meanwhile said they may have to wait up to five weeks for the full post-mortem results to be released, based on what she was told by an HKL official who attended to her request for a copy of the report.

“But this is a high-profile case, so I am anxious to see the report’s findings,” she said when contacted.