Pendakwa Raya v 1. ) SOON PING KIONG 2. ) Miss Prakat Tachan (Thailand) (P)

Case Significance

Illustrates how a single operation can generate multiple drug charges of differing gravity against the same accused and the court's practice of imposing concurrent terms combining life imprisonment on the principal trafficking charge with a shorter fixed term on a lesser charge.

This High Court decision at Shah Alam belongs to a group of drug prosecutions tried together arising from a police operation on 17 November 2020 in Shah Alam, Selangor, and this file carries two charges brought jointly against both accused. The first accused and the second accused, a foreign national, faced charges under seksyen 39B(1)(a) Akta Dadah Berbahaya 1952 (section 39B(1)(a) of the Dangerous Drugs Act 1952), punishable under section 39B(2), together with a further, lesser drug charge dealt with in the same file. The prosecution's case across the linked files rested on the seizure of methamphetamine at and around the car service centre during the operation, and the accused ran a common defence that the drugs belonged to a person then in detention under the Akta Langkah-Langkah Pencegahan Khas 1985 (the Special Preventive Measures Act 1985), coupled with an argument that the failure to call that person attracted an adverse inference under section 114(g) of the Evidence Act 1950. For each charge the court had to be satisfied that the prosecution had proved possession, with the necessary custody, control and knowledge, and the ingredients of the offence to the required standard before conviction, and to consider whether the defence pointing to the detained third party raised a doubt sufficient to displace that proof. Having assessed the evidence, the court convicted both accused. On the first charge under this file it sentenced each accused to life imprisonment, reckoned as thirty years from the date of arrest on 17 November 2020, and on the second charge to three years' imprisonment from the same date. Consistent with its treatment of the connected files, the court ordered that all the terms of imprisonment run concurrently from the date of arrest. The judgment is a useful illustration of how a single operation can generate multiple charges of differing gravity against the same accused, and of the court's practice of imposing concurrent terms, combining life imprisonment on the principal trafficking charge with a shorter fixed term on a lesser charge.