SHAH ALAM: The High Court here has declared a 10-year-old girl, abandoned at birth at the Kuala Lumpur Hospital and later legally adopted by a couple, a Malaysian citizen.
Justice Khadijah Idris also ordered the Registrar of Births and Deaths to reissue the girl’s birth certificate on the basis that she is a citizen by operation of law.
Khadijah said the girl was a “new born child found exposed” within the meaning of paragraph 19B Part 3 of the Second Schedule to the Federal Constitution.
“This triggered the presumption that the child was born to a mother who was a permanent resident in the federation,” she said in an online ruling delivered this evening.
She said the registrar’s earlier decision to issue the girl with a birth certificate stating that she was a non-citizen was unlawful and violated the child’s rights as a Malaysian citizen.
The identity of the girl and her adoptive parents was anonymised with the permission of the court.
Their lawyer, Sharmini Thiruchelvam, said the girl was born at the Kuala Lumpur Hospital on Feb 16, 2013.
She said her clients were informed by a woman that the child had been abandoned.
The couple initially failed in their attempt to register the baby as their child. In 2017, they opted to lawfully adopt her.
They sought legal redress in June 2022 after discovering that the girl was identified in her birth certificate as a non-citizen.
Federal counsel V Krishna Priya represented the government and the registrar. - FMT
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