Five full days after Maria Chin Abdullah’s arrest under the Security Offences (Special Measures) Act 2012 (Sosma), the inspector-general of police (IGP) tells us that she was arrested “following the discovery of ‘documents’ during a raid at the Bersih office in Petaling Jaya last week”.

Thus what the IGP is saying is that chronologically speaking, first some documents were found in Bersih’s office by the police raiding team. Then the documents were scrutinised there and then and among them were some incriminating ones. After finding ‘evidence’, Maria was arrested.

So according to the IGP, the documents were scrutinised in Bersih’s office during the raid, confirmed to contain some criminally incriminating ones before Maria was arrested and taken away.

If this is true, why wait five full days before telling the world that Maria was arrested only after incriminating evidence was found in Bersih’s office during the raid?

The IGP is a legally-trained person and must know that statements and/or assertions that are made after a lapse of time do not hold water. This is because one has had time to manufacture a different version of the actual event, and might have just done that.

If the IGP wanted people to believe what he is now saying after a lapse of five days, he should have said the very same thing soon after the arrest, at most within hours of the arrest.

Don’t tell us the “discovery of ‘documents’ during a raid at the Bersih office in Petaling Jaya last week” was classified under the Official Secrets Act (OSA) and that prevented him from disclosing the reason for the arrest.

The IGP’s “explanation” only puts his office in very bad light and further erodes its credibility. Can he tell us why it took him five full days to come up with this explanation if the arrest was honestly made only “following the discovery of ‘documents’ during a raid at the Bersih office in Petaling Jaya last week”?