Full trial for suit against MIC president, 7 others

Appeal court says particulars of conspiracy pleaded in the claim did not warrant the High Court judge to summarily strike out the suit.

PUTRAJAYA: The Court of Appeal today ordered the suit against MIC president Dr S Subramaniam and seven others over an alleged conspiracy to topple former president G Palanivel to go for full trial.

Justice Tengku Maimun Tuan Mat leading a three-member bench held that there were issues pleaded in the suit that should have been sorted out and determined during the trial.

“All questions of fact should have been sorted out and determined in the full trial. It is not a plain obvious case to be struck out,” she said.

She said the High Court judge had erroneously failed to accord due regard to the nature of the plaintiffs’ claim under Section 44 of the Evidence Act, which warranted the appellate court’s intervention.

Justice Tengku Maimun also said the particulars of conspiracy pleaded in the claim were sufficient to the plaintiffs and in any event did not warrant the High Court judge to summarily strike out the suit.

The court made the ruling after allowing the appeal by former MIC secretary-general A K Ramalingam and seven others to set aside the Kuala Lumpur High Court’s decision on July 11, 2016 to grant Subramaniam and other defendants’ applications to strike out the suit.

The panel, which included P Nalini and Zabariah Mohd Yusof ordered the case to be remitted to the High Court for trial and set aside the ruling made by Justice Yeoh Wee Siam.

Justice Tengku Maimun also directed the suit to be heard before another High Court judge.

The respondents (defendants) were Subramaniam, Registrar of Societies Malaysia (RoS) director-general Mohamad Razin Abdullah, officer Akmal Yahya, S Vigneswaran, Jaspal Singh, T Mohan, A Sakthivel and lawyer V Vasanthi.

Ramalingam had on Feb 5, 2016, filed the suit against them over an alleged conspiracy to topple former MIC president Palanivel in 2015.

The other plaintiffs in the suit were V Ganesh, Henry Benedict Asirvatham, M Sathiyamurthu, George Alexander Fernandez, R M Prabu, R Sithambaran Pillay and V Rajoo. -FMT