SUKHDARSHAN SINGH A/L BAG SINGH v TERMIT KAUR A/P RANJIT SINGH

Case Significance

Illustrates the incidence of the burden of proof under sections 101 to 103 of the Evidence Act 1950: a defendant who alleges that a transaction is illegal moneylending contrary to the Moneylenders Act 1951, or that his signature was forged, bears the burden of proving those assertions, and failing to do so, his appeal against the trial findings was dismissed.

This High Court decision at Kuala Lumpur, delivered by Judge Leong Wai Hong, is an appeal after a full trial in a dispute in which the defendant sought to defeat the plaintiff's claim by alleging that the underlying transaction was an illegal moneylending arrangement and that his signature on the relevant agreement was a forgery. The plaintiff had succeeded in the Sessions Court, and the defendant appealed. The appeal raised two evidential questions: who bore the burden of proving that the transaction contravened the Moneylenders Act 1951, and who bore the burden of proving the alleged forgery of the defendant's signature.

The court dismissed the appeal. On the moneylending allegation, it applied sections 101 to 103 of the Evidence Act 1950 and held that the burden lay on the defendant, who asserted that the arrangement was one of illegal moneylending, to prove that assertion; a party who alleges a particular fact must prove it. Similarly, on the forgery allegation, the court held that the defendant, having alleged that his signature on the agreement was forged, bore the onus of proving the forgery. The defendant had not discharged either burden. The court also restated the principles governing appellate intervention in a trial judge's findings of fact, emphasising that the starting point is that such findings are not lightly disturbed, and it found no basis to interfere with the Sessions Court's conclusions. It accordingly dismissed the appeal with costs of RM10,000, subject to allocatur. The court's approach underscores that allegations of illegality and forgery are serious charges that a party cannot simply assert to shift the risk of non-persuasion onto its opponent; the party raising them must adduce evidence sufficient to establish them, and a bare denial or unsupported suspicion will not do. The judgment is a useful illustration of the incidence of the burden of proof under sections 101 to 103 of the Evidence Act 1950 where a defendant raises illegal moneylending and forgery as defences.