Criminal Investigation Sought Into 'strip-search'

Lawyers for a woman who claims she was unnecessarily strip-searched after being arrested in connection with the ongoing anti-government protesters have written to the police demanding a criminal investigation into the allegation, a lawmaker revealed on Thursday.

The Civic Party's Tanya Chan said the letter sent to the force stresses that the matter should be treated as a crime rather than a complaint against officers.

It lists a series of questions concerning the police's interactions with the woman, surnamed Lui, and requests that police notebooks and security camera footage from the day in question be preserved.

Lui claimed at a press conference last month that she was strip-searched in a room at a police station by two female officers, who used a pen to force her to spread her legs. She also alleged that there were many male officers standing right outside the door to the room she was in.

But the police denied those allegations. They said a few days after the allegation that the women's custody search form and a police notebook show Lui wasn't required to undergo a full strip search, and no officer ordered her to strip.

They said officers who conducted a body search did not pat Lui with any object and security cameras outside the room showed there were no policemen waiting outside.

Chan made her revelation about the lawyers' intervention in the matter after returning from a trip to Geneva, where she addressed the United Nations' Human Rights Council.

She had told the body that Hong Kong is on the verge of a humanitarian crisis and cited cases of alleged police misconduct.

The police responded to her remarks by saying they take such "groundless accusations very seriously and doubt the source of information".