OPINION> EDITORIALS
The whole bare truth
(China Daily)
Updated: 2009-05-26 07:53

The truth, nothing but the truth, should be the sole prerequisite for delivery of justice in any particular case. So the first thing the police has to do in the investigation of a case is to get as much of the whole truth as possible.

That explains why the public security department in Badong county, Central China's Hubei province, is losing its credibility when the truth about the killing of a local official by a hotel waitress is becoming increasingly opaque.

It was reported that the waitress Deng Yujiao stabbed an official also surnamed Deng to death with a fruit knife when he asked her for "special service" and struck her on the head with a stack of cash after she turned down his request. Later, she turned herself in.

The successive changes the local police has made to the description of the case makes it appear as if they were deliberately diluting the truth in order to influence the trial of the waitress.

In the first notification about the investigation, the waitress was reported to have been pressed down on the sofa twice before she stabbed the official. In the second notification this was changed to the waitress being pushed back to her seat twice. When the waitress's lawyer said that she might have actually been raped, the local police denied it. When the lawyer said that evidence could be found in the pants and shirt of the waitress, the waitress' mother said that she had finally washed these clothes, 11 days after the incident.

The local police announced that the waitress' mother had terminated her contract with the lawyer even before she knew about it. In the latest variation of the case, two more waitresses appeared on the spot to mediate in the tussle between the waitress and the official.

With the waitress having turned herself in and two more local officials being witnesses on the spot, it should not be difficult for local police to get the whole truth. But the investigations, instead of clarifying the sequence of events, seem to have made the case even more complicated. It is deplorable that the local police have not obtained the garments worn by the waitress at the time of the incident.

It is natural for outsiders to suspect whether the local police are trying to whitewash what the dead official had done to the waitress. Some might even suspect that the waitress' mother has been pressured by the local police to destroy the evidence by washing her daughter's clothes.

From the viewpoint of conflict of interest, the public has enough ground to challenge the credibility of the county police in their investigation of this case.

As the chances of getting to the truth of the case become increasingly slimmer, it is imperative that higher authorities take a hand. One way to the truth may be to ask police from another jurisdiction that has no conflict of interest in this locality, to take up the investigation.

If the local police is found to be involved in a cover-up of the dead official's provocative act or is making a mess of the case, those responsible should be charged at least with dereliction of duty. Justice cannot be done unless the truth, not only about the case but also about the current investigation, is laid bare.

(China Daily 05/26/2009 page8)