MOHD NOOR AAZLY BIN YAHYA v Pendakwa Raya

Case Significance

A criminal-revision application concerning a DNAA, duplicity and alleged mala fide prosecution under section 254A CPC, dismissed for want of any miscarriage of justice warranting the supervisory power.

This High Court decision concerns an application in criminal revision, invoking the High Court's supervisory jurisdiction over the subordinate courts to examine the correctness, legality or propriety of a finding, sentence or order made below. The applicant sought revision in respect of a discharge not amounting to an acquittal (DNAA) and raised complaints that the charge was bad for duplicity and had been brought mala fide, engaging section 254A of the Criminal Procedure Code.

The Court set out the nature and limits of the revisionary power. Drawing on Iaw Kwai Wah & Anor v PP and PP v Kulasingam, it reiterated that the duty of the High Court is to satisfy itself as to the correctness, legality or propriety of any finding, sentence or order recorded by an inferior court and as to the regularity of its proceedings, and that the revisionary jurisdiction exists to correct a miscarriage of justice rather than to provide a substitute for the ordinary channels of appeal. Revision is a discretionary and supervisory remedy, exercised sparingly and not as a matter of course whenever a party is dissatisfied with an order below.

Measuring the applicant's complaints against that framework — the objections founded on duplicity of the charge, the allegation of a mala fide prosecution, and the effect of the discharge not amounting to an acquittal under section 254A — the Court found no basis to exercise its revisionary power in the applicant's favour and dismissed the application. It underscores that revision is neither a substitute for an appeal nor an avenue to reargue the merits of a discharge, but a residual power confined to correcting a clear illegality or impropriety in the proceedings below. The judgment is a useful illustration of the threshold a party must meet before the High Court will intervene by way of criminal revision, and of the distinction between an order that is merely unwelcome and one that discloses the illegality, impropriety or miscarriage of justice that revision is designed to cure.