My daughter is finally ‘coming home’, says mum in body-snatching row
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GEORGE TOWN, June 12 — Tan Mah Suan wept with joy today when she heard the Penang Shariah Court ruling her daughter, Teoh Cheng Cheng, was not a Muslim at the time of death.
The 64-year-old mother of four heaved a sigh of relief, glad she could put the whole ordeal of having to fight to claim the body of her sole daughter who was taken away during the 38-year-old’s funeral three days ago, behind her.
“I am so glad that even though my daughter has passed away, she is finally coming home to her family where she belongs,” she told reporters at lawyer, Ramkarpal Singh Deo’s office in Greenhall here.
Ramkarpal together with Gobind Singh Deo and S. Raveentharan represented Tan in her civil suit at the Penang High Court, which she filed this morning to claim back her daughter’s body, which had been taken away by the state Islamic religious law enforcers.
“I can now sleep peacefully because I can now proceed with the final funeral rites for my daughter to send her off the Buddhist way,” she said.
Tan likened the news to a “birthday gift”, even though her birthday was three months ago.
“I felt like it’s my birthday with this decision,” she said.
But Tan, who is also a grandmother, voiced bitter thoughts at what she saw as an unnecessary disruption to Teoh’s funeral on Monday.
“They should not have disrupted the funeral and what they did had wasted everyone’s time and caused us all unmentionable trauma,” Tan said.
Several officers from the Penang Islamic Religious Affairs Department (Jaipp) burst in on Teoh’s funeral ceremony before her cremation on June 9 and told her grieving kin the deceased was a Muslim convert and must be buried the Islamic way.
The officials took Teoh’s body to the mortuary with the intention to carry out Muslim final rites before the mother of four’s burial in a Muslim cemetery.
But her family later disputed her religious status, which delayed the planned burial.
Teoh was found dead died early Saturday morning after she hung herself at her Macallum Street home following a quarrel with her live-in Muslim boyfriend.
Despite the Shariah Court decision today, the family have yet to withdraw their civil suit against Jaipp, the Penang Islamic Council and the Penang Hospital.
“I will wait for the Shariah Court written court order and for the family to claim the body and cremate it before I do anything. So for now, I will leave the application as is,” Ramkarpal, lawyer for the family, said.
In her suit, Tan had applied for the civil High Court to declare her daughter a Buddhist.
The mother is also seeking court orders for Teoh’s body to be returned to her to be laid to rest the Buddhist or Taoist way and also an injunction to stop Jaipp from interfering in the family’s final rites.
The Shariah Court this afternoon ruled that Teoh was a non-Muslim and ordered her body to be returned to her family and for her funeral to proceed according to Buddhist rites.
The family, accompanied by their lawyers, had obtained the Shariah Court order and immediately headed to the mortuary at the general hospital to claim the body.
They are expected to perform the final funeral rites and have her cremated immediately after that.
