CARIS LUWDON A/L LOURDASAMY v Pendakwa Raya

Case Significance

Confirms that the discretion to grant bail in a SOSMA prosecution is confined to the section 13(2) exceptions and that section 388(1) of the Criminal Procedure Code does not apply to security offences.

This Court of Appeal ruling arises from a bail application in a Security Offences (Special Measures) Act 2012 ("Akta Kesalahan Keselamatan (Langkah-Langkah Khas) 2012", or SOSMA) prosecution, one of three related applications by co-accused heard and decided together by a three-member coram. The applicant had been arrested in September 2024 and charged before the Criminal Sessions Court with an offence under section 130V of the Penal Code ("seksyen 130V Kanun Keseksaan") — being a member of an organised criminal group — following which the matter was transferred to the High Court for trial under SOSMA. After the High Court refused bail, the applicant appealed, contending that the court retained a discretion to grant bail under section 388 or 389 of the Criminal Procedure Code read with section 13(2) of SOSMA. The Court of Appeal addressed whether any of the five statutory exceptions in section 13(2) applied, focusing on the exception for a person who is sick or infirm ("sakit atau uzur"), and whether the applicant's condition was serious enough to be harmful or life-threatening. It held that the threshold was not met: the applicant could obtain medical treatment in hospital notwithstanding detention, and the fact that prison conditions were uncomfortable did not justify bail. The Court agreed with the prosecution that section 388(1) of the Criminal Procedure Code is inapplicable to security offences such as the one charged, and considered it unnecessary to elaborate on the applicant's constitutional rights under Article 8 or the presumption of innocence, the governing law being settled. The application was dismissed unanimously as without merit, though the Court left open a fresh application should the applicant's health materially deteriorate. The judgment reinforces that the discretion to grant bail in SOSMA matters is tightly confined by the exceptions Parliament has specified. The applicants had pleaded not guilty and sought trial, and had been in custody since arrest; hearing the three applications together allowed the Court to apply a single, consistent analysis of the SOSMA bail regime to each of them while assessing their individual circumstances.