PETALING JAYA: The Court of Appeal today dismissed a former bus driver’s application to review the eight-year jail sentence imposed on him for sodomising an 11-year-old boy in a bus in 2016.
A three-member panel comprising Justices Ahmad Zaidi Ibrahim, Zaini Mazlan and Ahmad Fairuz Zainol Abidin ruled there was no merit in Kassim Tahir’s review application, Bernama reported.
Zaidi said Kassim had failed to show any exceptional circumstances warranting the panel’s interference with the decision of the previous Court of Appeal panel.
He said Kassim had not provided evidence of flagrant incompetence by his former lawyer, who had competently fulfilled his duties and functions throughout the trial.
On Sept 20 last year, a Court of Appeal panel comprising Justices Hadhariah Syed Ismail, Azman Abdullah and SM Komathy Suppiah reinstated the sessions court’s decision to convict Kassim of the offence.
The panel, however, reduced Kassim’s prison term from 10 years to eight years and set aside the whipping sentence initially imposed on him.
The sessions court had convicted Kassim on July 16, 2019 of three counts of sodomising the boy and sentenced him to 10 years in prison and one stroke of the cane on each charge, with the sentences to run concurrently.
On Sept 8, 2020, the High Court overturned the sessions court’s decision and acquitted and discharged him, which led the prosecution to appeal to the Court of Appeal.
According to the charge sheet, Kassim committed the offences on a bus in Ulu Tiram, Johor, between April and May 2016.
During today’s proceedings, Kassim’s lawyer, G Subramaniam Nair, argued that the previous Court of Appeal panel failed to address or overlooked the incompetence of Kassim’s previous lawyer in handling the facts and law in his case, which had led to a mistrial.
He further contended that the evidence showed a “designed criminal conspiracy” to implicate Kassim with those charges.
Deputy public prosecutor Fairuz Johari countered that the issue of counsel competency was without merit, as it had not been raised during the proceedings at the High Court or before the previous Court of Appeal panel.
He also argued that there were no exceptional circumstances that warranted a review of the case.
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