PUTRAJAYA: The Court of Appeal has reserved its judgment for an appeal brought by the government and political analyst Abdul Razak Baginda against RM5mil in damages granted by the civil court to the family of murdered Mongolian model Altantuya Shaariibuu three years ago.
Justice Hashim Hamzah, who chaired the panel yesterday, said the judges needed more time to deliberate on the matter after hearing submissions by all sides.
“We will fix case management to set the decision day after Deepavali,” he said here yesterday.
The court then fixed Oct 27 for case management before a deputy registrar.
The other judges on the panel were Justices Azman Abdullah and K. Muniandy.
Earlier, senior federal counsel Nik Mohd Noor Nik Kar, who appeared for the government, submitted that the trial judge had erred when he did not distinguish personal liabilities amongst the respondents and gave a global sum for damages.
He said the RM5mil in damages was excessive and proposed to replace the sum with RM1,384,000 as a more “reasonable amount”.
Lawyer Datuk Dr Gurdial Singh Nijar, who represented Abdul Razak, submitted that there was no direct evidence tying Abdul Razak to the allegations of conspiring to kill the deceased, who was murdered in 2006.
Meanwhile, lawyer Sangeet Kaur Deo, who appeared for Altantuya’s family, argued that the trial judge was correct in granting the award sum.
“It is trite law that the appellate court would be slow to intervene in discretionary powers. This was a global award that the judge was entitled to make,” she said.
After Altantuya’s murder in October 2006, her parents Dr Shaariibuu and Altantsetseg Sanjaa and her son Mungunshagai Bayarjargal filed a civil suit over her death, seeking RM100mil in damages.
They named two former members of the Special Actions Unit (UTK), C/Insp Azilah Hadri, Kpl Sirul Azhar Umar, Abdul Razak and the government as defendants.
Abdul Razak was initially charged together with Sirul and Azilah for Altantuya’s murder, but he was freed at the end of the prosecution’s case on Oct 31, 2008.
Meanwhile, Sirul and Azilah were both convicted in 2009.
In 2013, the former policemen won their appeals at the Court of Appeal but in 2015, the Federal Court upheld the High Court’s conviction and reinstated the death penalty on both men. Sirul did not appear in court during the Federal Court’s decision and is believed to be in Australia.
Azilah is currently in jail after his death sentence was commuted to 40 years in prison following a review application in October last year. He was also sentenced to 12 strokes of the rotan.
