Uthaya loses leave application in apex court

The Federal Court has unanimously dismissed a leave application by Human Rights Party pro-tem secretary-general P Uthayakumar to challenge the appellate court's rejection of his RM100 million defamation suit.

Uthayakumar (right) had sued former police chief Musa Hassan and Attorney-General Abdul Gani Patail for accusing him of having links with the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Elam (LTTE), the Tamil separatist movement in Sri Lanka.

Chief Justice Arifin Zakaria, who led a five-member panel, also ordered Uthayakumar to pay RM10,000, rejecting lawyer M Manoharan's plea not to impose costs on his client.

Last March, the Court of Appeal in a 2-1 judgement had rejected Uthayakumar’s suit after the Shah Alam High Court had ordered a full trial to be held.
 
On appeal, however, it was decided that the statements by Musa and Abdul Gani were directed at the Hindu Rights Action Force (Hindraf), and not at Uthayakumar, who was then its legal advisor.

The court also ruled that Hindraf was declared an illegal organisation on Oct 15, 2008 and therefore Uthayakumar has no locus standi to pursue legal action.

Senior federal counsel Amarjeet Singh argued that the two news reports published on Dec 7, 2007 did not specifically refer to Uthayakumar, only to Hindraf.

Manoharan responded by saying that Star, on Dec 15, 2007, had quoted Musa as referring to Uthayakumar and four others detained under the Internal Security Act as being connected to the LTTE.

Loss of compensation

The apex court also dismissed Uthayakumar's leave application to challenge the Appeal Court's decision to overturn a Kuala Lumpur High Court order on RM145,000 compensation for ‘wrongful arrest’ in 2003.

The High Court on July 29, 2010 had awarded the sum ascompensation and damages following his detention by the police on Jan 16, 2003, at the Magistrate's Court in Sepang.

Uthayakumar had sued the government, the Royal Malaysian Police and 11 police officers for malicious conduct, for forcing him to strip at the Sepang police station while being detained.

His arrest was ordered at the end of an inquest by the Magistrate’s Court into the death of S Tharmarajah, who was in police custody.

Uthayakumar had been detained on a charge of criminally intimidating a chief inspector of police during the inquest.

Manoharan told reporters after the hearing today that he would seek a review of the decision.