Alias Ibrahim & Co.

On the court record

The firm's record illustrates the representation process by which a capital trafficking charge may be reduced to a non-capital offence under the Dangerous Drugs Act 1952, and the requirements for a valid charge in a forgery prosecution.

Alias Ibrahim & Co. appears in the corpus as counsel in criminal litigation, acting both for the accused at first instance and for appellants, in the High Court (Mahkamah Tinggi) and the Court of Appeal (Mahkamah Rayuan), largely in Bahasa Malaysia.

On the dangerous-drugs side the firm acted for the accused in a trafficking prosecution under seksyen 39B(1)(a) Akta Dadah Berbahaya 1952 (section 39B(1)(a) of the Dangerous Drugs Act 1952), where, following representations made by the accused, the prosecution offered a first alternative charge under seksyen 39A(2) of the same Act, and the court imposed a term of six years and six months' imprisonment from the date of arrest together with strokes of the rotan. The matter illustrates the practical operation of the plea-and-representation process by which a capital trafficking charge may be reduced to a non-capital offence.

On the forgery side the firm acted for an appellant before the Court of Appeal in an appeal, argued in Malay, concerning charges under sections 464, 465 and 471 of the Penal Code for making a false document and using as genuine a forged document, read with the definitions of dishonestly in section 24 and reason to believe in section 26. The appeal contended that an alternative charge was defective and invalid for failing to state the specific date of the offence, and raised the absence of a consent to prosecute under section 58 of the Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission Act 2009, the court holding that the charge was clear and regular and that an offence occurring in a stated month gave rise to no confusion.

The accused persons are referred to here by their procedural role. The firm's record is a criminal-litigation practice engaging both serious drug offences and forgery, with careful attention to the framing and validity of charges. In both fields the firm's advocacy is directed at the precise terms on which an accused is put on trial, whether by negotiating a reduced alternative charge under the dangerous-drugs legislation or by challenging the sufficiency and regularity of a forgery charge and the presence of the requisite consent to prosecute, so that the form of the charge itself is often the decisive battleground.