Karpal: Copycat judge has no right to be in service

It is clear that the Appeal Court judge accused of plagiarism is guilty, and he should therefore not continue to serve the country's judicial system, veteran lawyer Karpal Singh says.

Citing a Singapore daily's report quoting former Singapore judge GP Selvam on the matter, Karpal said in a statement, "What is clear is that Abdul Malik Ishak is guilty of plagiarism.

"He should be man enough to resign, because his continued occupation of the seat of judge of the Court of Appeal is absolutely untenable."

Failing this, he added, the chief justice should direct that a tribunal be set up under Article 123(3) of the federal constitution to try the judge for "misconduct".

Karpal, who is also DAP national chairperson, pointed out that Selvam had not retracted the said news report in the March 18, 2000, edition of Singapore's Straits Times.

"Therefore, what is in the report is the truth," he said.

The article, he added, proved that the Singapore judge had "lied in his letter dated Nov 2 to chief justice (Arifin Zakaria) that there was no cause for him to complain about plagiarism against a Malaysian judge".

‘Wither basis for dismissal'

Karpal reproduced the said article from the Singapore daily, titled ‘Judicial Copycat', which states:

"Lawyers copy from other lawyers, and even judges copy too, said a High Court judge earlier this week, when he heard a copyright infringement case.

"Justice GP Selvam related how he wrote a judgment, but even before it was released, it was out in the open.

"He said a judge from Malaysia had obtained the judgment through a lawyer and ‘copied chunks from me without my acknowledging'.

"And to add insult to injury, his Malaysian counterpart backdated his judgment to the date of Justice Selvam's, so that people would ‘think that I copied' from him!"

Karpal charged that this proved "without a shadow of a doubt" that Selvam had lied, and called for the Singapore chief justice to take necessary action against Selvam for bringing the republic's judiciary into "disrepute".

With this, Karpal questioned the CJ's announcement on Dec 30 last year that there was "no merit" to the complaint against Abdul Malik.

"I wonder what Abdul Malik Ishak wrote in the letter dated Dec 29 to the chief justice, which was taken into account in the dismissal of my ‘complaint'," Karpal added.