by Teo Soh Lung
After the publication of THE PRICE OF LIBERTY IS ETERNAL VIGILANCE, which discussed section 112 of the Criminal Procedure Code that authorise law enforcement officers to request a person under investigation for an offence to surrender his travel documents, a lawyer friend commented that his clients’ passports were held for years when they were under investigation.
The police threatened to charge them in court if they asked for their return. Afraid of publicity and hoping that they will not be charged in court, they let the police retain their passports. My friend is of the view that such a practice is an abuse of power.
Another friend told me that passports are important personal documents and may be required for notarisation purposes. The person who needs to sign a declaration before a notary public or commissioner for oaths would not be able to do so without the production of his passport. It is embarrassing for the person to disclose that his passport is in the custody of a law enforcement agency because of some investigation. Administrative inconvenience aside, it is inconvenient to the person who has to request the return of his passport.
Community worker, Mr Gilbert Goh, who had his passport impounded when he was charged with unlawful assembly, told me that several prisoners he met also had their passports impounded. Their offences ranged from failure to pay fines for minor accidents to fighting.
What is the purpose of section 112 of the CPC? Is it to inconvenience the public or the law enforcement agencies?
Passports have expiry dates. What if a person needs to travel for business urgently and his passport while in the custody of the police has expired?
When did this practice of requiring the surrender of passports pending completion of investigation commence? Is it from as far back as 2010, when section 112 of the CPC became law?
Law and Home Affairs Minister K Shanmugam disclosed during the second reading of the Criminal Procedure Code Bill that “The Subordinate Courts deal with about 250,000 charges a year, of which some 200,000 are departmental cases. …”
If 250,000 people are charged in court every year, the number of those investigated by law enforcement agencies would definitely be higher. It would be good if the Ministry for Home Affairs disclosed how many passports are held by law enforcement agencies every year.
If every investigation takes two or three years to complete, as in the case of Ravi M and Terry Xu’s, what is the number of passports held by law enforcement agencies as of today?
For now, we have to thank M Ravi and Terry Xu for challenging the authority of the police to withhold their passports and the District Court judges for ordering the return of their passports. At least we now know that police power can be challenged, and we need not have to suffer inconvenience and embarrassment in silence should we have the misfortune of having our passports taken away.
