Demands are being made for Inspector-General of Police Mohd Bakri Omar and his deputy, Musa Hassan, to resign over the infamous strip-search at the Petaling Jaya police station.

DAP leader Lim Kit Siang said Musa should resign for "dropping a "bombshell" and for insubordination when he exonerated the policewoman seen in a 70-second video clip which shows a Chinese woman doing ear-squats in the nude.

He said Musa's comment that police were after the person behind the footage, taken using a MMS-enabled mobile phone, has confirmed the fears of a majority of Malaysians.

"Firstly, that the police cannot be trusted as far as investigating crime involving police personnel (is concerned) and secondly, the police will deflect attention from the policewoman to the person who (captured the scene)," he said in a statement.

Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi and his deputy Najib Abdul Razak had said last week that no cover-up of police wrong-doing would be tolerated.

Lim said that although media reports also condemned the person who took the footage, it was "a secondary issue".

He expected Musa's statement to raise "a tsunami of public disgust, revulsion and condemnation", saying the case is the tip of an iceberg in reflecting systemic police abuse and ignores recommendations for reform.

The Royal Commission to Enhance the Operations and Management of the Royal Malaysia Police, in its 600-page report, included a recommendation to create an external complaints and probe mechanism.

'Take responsibility'

Police Watch and Human Rights Committee legal adviser M Manoharan demanded that Abdullah immediately sack both the top police officers if they do not resign within the next 48 hours.

"(Both) must take full responsibility for these alarming and (unrepentant) police atrocities and (must) honourably resign to restore public confidence in the police force, law and order, and in the administration of criminal justice," he said in a statement.

Citing Musa's statement, he said it only goes to show a typical and classical case of "police cover-up mentality".

In April 2005, he claimed, a female suspect under interrogation was asked whether she used the neck massager she had as a vibrator, how often she used it and how it felt.

She was then accused of sleeping with her son-in-law to be, and was told that she would be raped by some policemen in custody later that day.

He cited another case in 2003 where a female detainee told the Rawang magistrate that the interrogating officer had forced her to perform oral sex on a male detainee.

She then allegedly watched her husband, also a detainee, brought in naked before her and their teenage daughter.

Manoharan said despite numerous police reports on deaths in police custody and shootings as well as a high court judge's remark that it was sufficient for the police simply to adhere to procedures, no investigations have taken place.

"Hundreds if not thousands of other cases of police abuses, deaths in police custody and deaths by police shooting have been going on with impunity," he added.