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The
Bureau and that the statements were induced by that pressure.
argument is based largely upon the fact that the officers concerned
admittedly did not include any reference to the first visit to the
Triad Society Bureau in the records of events they made in their
notebooks and it is suggested that this omission was a deliberate
attempt to hide a visit during which pressure was brought to bear
upon these applicants. Support for the argument is sought from
some discrepancies in the police evidence as to the times of arrival
at the police station and it is said that such uncertainty exists
that the judge should not have been satisfied beyond reasonable doubt
that the statements were voluntary. To this was added the contention
that the statements were inherently suspect because they gave an
account which on the medical evidence could not be true.
What is said as to the medical evidence is that it was
inconsistent with the case propounded by counsel for the Crown. What Dr. Ong said was that the five tri-radiate stab wounds which
he found on the body were consistent with their having been inflicted by a triangular scraper and not with a triangular file and he gave as his reason the fact that he found no marks on the body corresponding to the serrated edges of a file. But he did say that the weapon might have been one similar to the top of the instrument produced to him. What did he mean by that? The instrument produced was basically a triangular file but about half the length of the blade had been smoothed and grooves had been cut so as to turn it into a scraper. This was not the weapon alleged by the Crown to have been used by the third and fourth Applicants but it had been made at the request of the police as a replica of the weapon alleged to have been used.
It was made from memory by the man who had made the original. The jury may well have come to the conclusion that the blade of the original had been smoothed along a greater part of its length than had this replica and that the instrument they were shown was not so exact a replica that the original could not have caused wounds like those found on the Deceased without leaving evidence of serration around the edges.
We have considered all the passages in the evidence which counsel has rend to us and it is enough for us to say that we are not persuaded that the judge was wrong to find, as he did, that the statements of the second to fourth Applicants were voluntary.
In this connection we must mention a related ground of appeal based upon the disallowance, of questions in the cross-examination