Noorizwan Zulkefly

Noorizwan Zulkefly was a 42-year-old Malaysian man from the Kajang and Cheras area of Selangor who became the centre of a major national controversy after he died while in police custody in Kuala Lumpur. He had not been a public figure before his arrest. He was taken into custody by Cheras district police on 19 September 2026 to assist investigations under the Dangerous Drugs Act 1952 and two Penal Code sections relating to housebreaking and theft. He was held in the lock-up at the Cheras district police headquarters (IPD Cheras) for about ten to eleven days.

On 30 September 2026 his condition deteriorated and he was transferred to Hospital Canselor Tuanku Muhriz (HCTM) in Cheras for treatment. He was pronounced dead there at 1.52am on 1 October 2026. For roughly two weeks after his death, police described the case only as a sudden death, and his family said it was not informed of what had happened for about eighteen hours. The case only became a matter of wide public concern in mid October, after the family's lawyers made public the findings of an independent post-mortem.

That post-mortem, carried out by a senior pathologist, documented twenty one injuries on Noorizwan's body, including severe swelling of the skull, bleeding in the brain and in the intestines, and injuries running from his head to his feet. His family's lawyers, from the group Lawyers for Liberty, said the pathologist had concluded he died of blunt force trauma to the head, a finding disputed by the authorities, who said a later police led post-mortem found no injuries to his internal organs, although several external injuries were present, and that the exact cause of death remained subject to toxicology and forensic analysis.

The case mattered because it reopened one of Malaysia's most sensitive and long running human rights issues: deaths of detainees in police lock-ups. Civil society groups including Lawyers for Liberty and SUARAM, opposition and government backbench members of parliament, and commentators compared the case to that of A Kugan, a young man whose 2009 death in police custody became a landmark scandal, with some describing Noorizwan's case as the worst custodial death since then. The case intensified long standing calls for an Independent Police Complaints and Misconduct Commission with real investigative teeth.

Under public pressure, the Inspector General of Police ordered the Bukit Aman Criminal Investigation Department to take over the probe, and Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim ordered a thorough, transparent and uncompromising investigation. On 26 October 2026 the Independent Police Conduct Commission (IPCC), a statutory oversight body, confirmed it had opened its own investigation into alleged misconduct connected with Noorizwan's death, to be referred in due course to the Police Force Commission. As of the final week of October, no police officer had been suspended or arrested, and Noorizwan's family and their lawyers were continuing to press for the case to be investigated as a possible murder rather than a sudden death.

Noorizwan was remembered by relatives as a father. His brother, Nooranis Zulkefly, became the family's public voice, saying it felt kept in the dark after his death and repeatedly appealing to the Prime Minister and police leadership for a transparent accounting of what happened to him in custody.