Tan Sri Abdul Rahman bin Hashim dilahirkan pada 7 Julai 1925 di Yan, Kedah. Setelah lulus Senior Cambridge pada tahun 1940 (Kolej Sultan Abdul Hamid, Alor Setar), beliau menyertai pasukan Polis dan dilantik menjadi Inspektor pada 17 Oktober 1941. Allahyarham seterusnya menjadi Penolong Penguasa Polis pada 1952, Ketua Cawangan Khas Pulau Pinang (1960), Pengarah Cawangan Khas (1971) dan dilantik sebagai Ketua Polis Negara yang ke-3 pada 1 Februari 1973.
Komunis sedar bahawa tekanan yang diberikan oleh gabungan pasukan keselamatan Thai dan Malaysia ke atas mereka di sempadan Malaysia-Thai akan dapat dikurangkan dengan cara menghapuskan para perancang di dalam Thai-Malaya General Border Committee.
Abdul Rahman adalah ahli Border Committee tersebut, oleh kerana itu beliau telah menjadi salah satu sasaran utama pengganas.
Mereka melakukan tinjauan selama seminggu dengan memerhatikan pergerakan KPN antara rumahnya di Jalan Kia Peng dan Ibu Pejabat Polis di Kuala Lumpur.
Pada jam 7 pagi, 7 Jun 1974, beliau telah diserang semasa dalam perjalanan ke Ibu Pejabat Polis untuk mengambil dokumen, kerana Allahyarham akan menemui ahli-ahli Thai-Malaya General Border Committee pada mesyuarat yang akan diadakan di Federal Hotel, Kuala Lumpur.
Serangan yang dilakukan di persimpangan Jalan Weld dan Jalan Tun Perak menyebabkan pemandunya cedera parah, manakala Abdul Rahman meninggal dunia setibanya di Hospital Besar Kuala Lumpur.
Allahyarham telah ditembak 11 das dengan 7 dan mengenai bahu, rusuk dan paha kiri!
BERIKUT ADALAH CERITA ANAK ALLAHYARHAM, NAJIB RAHMAN MENGENAI KEJADIAN YANG MENIMPA AYAHNYA ITU. BELIAU ADALAH SEORANG BEKAS WARTAWAN.
0745: Driving out of the house, I gave a quick glance at workers putting up several marquees in the sprawling compound. My father had planned to throw a dinner for about 200 Malaysian and Thai police officers on Saturday night to mark the end of the GBC meeting.
Once more, it never crossed my mind that the tents would house a more morose event
0800: After picking up a friend in Cheras, I drove towards the city. My friend, a Malay Mail reporter, had to cover the courts, then located on Court Hill, where Menara Maybank now stands.
08 20 : Coming down from Jalan Weld, I tried to take a short cut to Court Hill via Lorong Raja Chulan, but a policeman waved me on. I took a detour.
0822: Driving past Lorong Raja Chulan, I noticed to my left, that a group of people had gathered around a car. I couldn’t make out the vehicle’s model but sensed an accident had occurred. I made a mental note to check that one out later.
I had made a rolling stop and was just about to proceed towards Court Hill when NST reporter Kristel Kraal spotted me and waved frantically for me to stop. I wound down the front passenger window and asked her what the problem was?
Looking rather distressed, she blurted out that a senior police officer had been shot. I asked, “Who?” to which she said she didn’t know yet. Immediately, my reporter’s instincts kicked in and out came the words: “Alright Kris, this a big story. Get the details while I go parkmy car up the hill. I’ll join you shortly.” I never kept the appointment.
I never found out from Kristel whether she had known all along that it was my father who had been gunned down; that she had kept mum about the officer’s identity because she thought I should be spared finding out the way I did.
Kristel died several years later of c a n c e r.
Getting down from the car, I walked quickly towards the staircase leading to the road below. Once there, from the top of the staircase, I saw the roof of a sky blue Mercedes Benz. It immediately struck me that there was only one such blue Mercedes in the city.
I remember the feeling that ran through my body then as if itwas just yesterday. Almost certainly it will live in me and haunt me for the rest of my days. Still rooted at the top of the staircase, it finally dawned on me that it
was my father who was bleeding down there.
Suddenly, I felt sick. A wave of nausea swept over me. I could feel the blood draining from my body as panic set in. I started to become pale. I wanted to run, to get down to father, to help him… but my feet would not move. Iwanted to shout “Bapak” but the words died in my throat as soon as they were born.
Then, a looming cloud of darkness started to converge upon me, threatening to engulf my senses. I started to feel fear, a drowning kind of fear that I had not imagined possible. I felt my head spinning.
Summoning all my strength, I broke the clamp that had shackled my legs.
Soon I found myself “flying” down the staircase screaming “Bapaaak! Bapaaak” at the top of my lungs.
There were onlookers sitting on the steps but to me they were just a blur as I whizzed past them, yelling, “Bapak aku! Bapak aku!” (my father! my father!). As as a young boy, I had dreamt I was being tossed around by a tiger. As a reporter, I had to shake off two gun-toting Thai bandits trailing me in Betong.
But I had not felt such terror as I was experiencing now.
Only this time, I felt terror for my father, thinking “I must help him, I must save him”. Hitting the ground, I charged towards the car, half screaming and half crying, “Bapak, Bapak!…” I had nearly reached it when I ran smack into a wall, in the form of the burly frame of famed crimebuster Deputy Superintendent S. Kulasingam (who has since passed away).
Wrapping his huge arms around me, Kula literally lifted me off my feet and whispered, “Najib, Najib, it’s all right, it’s all right, we’ve sent your father to the hospital.” Through my tears, I looked into his eyes and saw
that he, too, was tearing up.
After a while, Kula put me down and I made for the Mercedes. Somewhat calmer, I examined the car. Both windows to the left of the driver and the left side of the back passenger seat were shattered. Clearly, the attackwas launched from the left side of the road. I peered at the back seat where father must have been
sitting. The backrest, seat and floor were stained with fresh blood, father’s blood.
I had just started to imagine a picture of father lying motionless but breathing heavily at the back seat, uniform soaked with blood, when Kula pulled me away and whisked me into a waiting police car, an Alfa Romeo. At high speed and with sirens wailing, the crew rushed me to the Kuala Lumpur General Hospital (now HKL).
Arriving at the hospital I noticed that a large crowd had totally engulfed the foyer and the entrance to the accident and emergency unit. A patrolman ushered me in. In the car, I had wondered about father. Was he badly hurt? Was he alive? Or was he…? The last thought, I quickly banished from my mind. It was unacceptable.
From a distance, I saw him lying on a trolley, face and arms exposed but covered in a piece of white sheet heavily stained with blood. Several police officers stood quietly nearby, ashen-faced. My heart was pounding as I walked towards father.
Reaching his side, I called out to him, I shook him, touched his face, held his hands and ran my fingers over his. They were limp and lifeless.
Then, almost unbelievingly, at the cold realisation that he had returnedto the merciful embrace of Allah, I fell over his body, hugged him tightly and repeatedly cried out “sorry”… sorry that I wasn’t there to help him just
when he needed me most.
The two gunmen, according to the official story, were communist hitmen.
Standing side by side, they fired automatic pistols towards father and his driver, Sgt Omar. The sergeant took a nick in the neck, opened his door and fled the scene.
But father never had a chance. I suspect he must have been reading his files, like he usually did, when the bullets ripped into his body. The lacerations, the tearing away of the flesh from the fingers of both hishands that I saw at the hospital, could only mean that he was trying toward off the bullets with his hands. He was just 51.
The duo allegedly responsible for father’s death were eventually caught, but only after they had summarily dispatched another highranking police officer, Tan Sri Khoo Chong Kong, then the chief police officer of Perak, in the same year.
NOTA: Kes pembunuhan Ketua Polis Negara, Tan Sri Abdul Rahman Hashim pada 7 Jun 1974 telah selesai. Penjenayah-penjenayah terbabit yang turut terlibat dalam kes pembunuhan bekas Ketua Polis Perak, Tan Sri Khoo Chong Kong, telah dikenal pasti, ditangkap, dituduh dan dijatuhkan hukuman mati.
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