NARATHIWAT: The Narathiwat Court freed Malaysian dikir barat singer Wan Norshaheeda Azlin Wan Ismail, better known as Eda Ezrin, her husband, and four others from the charge of possessing 6,059 yaba pills.
The court's two-judge panel made the decision after finding no evidence to connect the possession of the drug with all the accused, namely the 30-year-old singer, her husband Mohd Affendi Ahmad, 35; Eridieka Mohd Noor, 33; Mohamad Alif Deraman, 33; Nur Aida Mamat, 33 and Zuhaira Nasrin, 26.
The court also found that the CCTV footage at a hotel in Sungai Golok, here, also did not show that the six individuals brought all the drugs into the room.
"On the contrary, there were three other individuals who brought the drugs into the rooms of the six accused," said the panel when reading out their decision in Thai with Malay translation.
The judge set the decision date for the case on Thursday (March 6) after hearing testimonies from prosecution witnesses during the three-day trial last month.
The six accused were previously sentenced to six months in jail and fined RM526 (4,000 Thai baht) after pleading guilty to another charge of consuming the Yaba pills.
However, they were exempted from paying the fine after serving four months in jail and demonstrating good behaviour throughout their detention at the Narathiwat Prison.
Meanwhile, their lawyer, Sufian Abdul Aziz, told reporters that the prosecution could file an appeal against the decision within a month.
"At the moment, all six of my clients have not yet been allowed to leave and must remain in prison while waiting for the prosecution to file an appeal.
"If there is no appeal, they will be allowed to return to Malaysia," he said.
The media previously reported that six Malaysians, including a popular female dikir barat singer famous for the song Bea Sobar Bea, were arrested in a raid at a hotel in Golok town on Nov 1 last year for allegedly possessing more than 6,000 psychotropic pills. – Bernama
