It is utterly disgraceful that a mother was forced to take legal action against the police, the inspector-general of police, the government of Malaysia, and the Home Minister to bring justice to her daughter.

On 7 December 2017, 18-year-old model, Ivana Smit, was found dead at the foot of a 20-storey apartment block in KL.

After being given the runaround by the police, a questionable first autopsy, and a highly unsatisfactory performance of all the agencies in the investigation, Smit’s mother, Christina Carolina Gerarda Johanna Verstappen, had little choice in 2020, but to take legal action against the inspector-general of police, Dang Wangi investigating officer Faizal Abdullah, the home minister, and the Malaysian government.

Verstappen alleged that the government and police were negligent in their duties to investigate her daughter’s suspicious death and after a long battle, she won.

The court found the defendants liable and ordered them to pay the plaintiff RM1.1 million in damages.

Sadly, no amount of money will bring Smit back to life, but what is equally important, is that Verstapppen has helped to highlight to the whole world what the majority of Malaysians have already known for years and continue to suffer from.

The open secret is that Malaysia has a bumbling police force and a broken procedural system.

We have read about botched investigations which happen with alarming regularity.

We have read about the mindless inconsistencies in these cases and the thing which most people wonder is that for every case that is highlighted and brought to the public’s attention, how many others are quietly forgotten?

The ones that become headline news made it to the media only because of the dogged determination of the family members to demand the truth, to receive justice, and to get closure.

The names of people whose families had to battle it out with the authorities are etched in our memories.

Teoh Beng Hock, A. Kugan, the Mongolian model, Altantuya Shaaribuu, and scores of other victims, whose mysterious deaths were in most cases simply brushed aside as “sudden death,” or “suicide” despite the apparent signs of foul play.

Then there are the equally mysterious disappearances of Pastor Raymond Koh, preacher Amri Che Mat, Pastor Joshua Hilmi and his wife, Ruth, and recently, Pamela Ling, who was helping the Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission, in an investigation into money-laundering.

Have the police learnt anything from their mistakes? Have they fixed the broken system?

For every high-profile case, how do others languish by the wayside, where the families of the victims were so distraught in their grief, that they simply resigned themselves to what the authorities told them, had happened to their family member.

In other cases, the families simply do not know who to approach for help, to establish what went wrong in their relative’s death. Many lack the resources or the know-how, to be able to seek the truth, and receive justice.

When 78-year-old Hendrick Smit was told that his granddaughter, Ivana, had been found dead at the foot of a 20-storey apartment block in KL, his nightmare was only just beginning.

Police failed to provide answers to the many questions he posed. Ivana’s nude body had been found on the sixth-floor balcony of a block of apartments, The CapSquare Residences, in Kuala Lumpur.

She had apparently fallen from the 20th floor, where she had spent the night with an American, Alexander William Johnson and his wife, Luna Almazkyzy.

Bizarrely, the police declared that there was no foul play and the case was classified as sudden death.

Dissatisfied with the police response, the family sought the help of the Dutch embassy.

Neighbors of the American couple claimed they had heard people shouting, possibly fighting, early that morning.

They also allege that young models were often invited to the couple’s home for drug binges and sex games.

Johnson and Almazkyzy claimed that they knew nothing about Ivana plunging to her death.

Almazkyzy claimed she had taken their four-year-old daughter to school that morning, whilst Johnson said he was asleep, from the time Ivana had fallen to her death, until the time she was found.

Smit’s family arranged for a second autopsy, conducted by a Dutch pathologist, Frank de Goot. His findings were vastly different from Dr Zunaizah Hilmi’s, who conducted the initial autopsy.

First, the police prematurely classified the case as suicide.

Why would Ivana take her own life? The talented teenager was going to Paris, on 21 December, having been shortlisted for the “Top Model Belgium 2018” contest.

Second, the police failed to secure the crime scene and potentially compromising critical evidence was probably lost. Key forensic clues were ignored, like the grip marks on Ivana’s upper arm, head injuries inconsistent with a fall, and Johnson’s DNA found beneath Ivana’s nails.

The police allowed Johnson and Almazkyzy to use their mobile phones while in custody, which enabled them to instruct others to clean the scene, effectively facilitating evidence tampering. Weeks later, they fled the country.

Strict adherence to standard procedures were not followed.

There was an eight-hour delay before the arrival of forensic officers who failed to record body temperature to estimate the time of death.

The police failed to properly scrutinize CCTV data, and failed to secure the crime scene thus enabling the rain to wash away any footprints and other clues from the balcony.

Despite repeated botched investigations, have the police learnt anything from their mistakes? Have they fixed the broken system?

(Mariam Mokhtar is a Freelance Writer.)