Nik Ikhwan & Co.

On the court record

The firm's record illustrates how a break in the chain of evidence or an unanalysed prosecution witness can render a trafficking conviction unsafe on appeal, and the exemption from whipping for an accused over fifty under section 289(c) of the Criminal Procedure Code.

Nik Ikhwan & Co. appears in the corpus as counsel in dangerous-drugs litigation, acting both for appellants on appeal and for the accused at first instance, in the High Court (Mahkamah Tinggi) and the Court of Appeal (Mahkamah Rayuan) in both English and Bahasa Malaysia.

On appeal the firm acted for appellants before the Court of Appeal in appeals against convictions for trafficking under section 39B(1)(a) of the Dangerous Drugs Act 1952, punishable under section 39B(2), where accused persons had been sentenced to life imprisonment from the date of arrest and strokes of the rotan. The arguments centred on whether the defence had been sufficiently considered by the trial judge, whether there was a break in the chain of evidence, whether discrepancies affected the credibility of witnesses, and whether the conviction and sentence were safe, engaging section 180(1) of the Criminal Procedure Code.

In one such appeal, argued in Malay, the firm succeeded: the Court of Appeal held that the conviction recorded by the trial judge was not safe (sabitan yang diputuskan tidak selamat) and set it aside, ordering the accused dilepas dan dibebaskan (discharged and acquitted), the court finding that the trial judge had not analysed the credibility of a key prosecution witness whose evidence was inconsistent, and that the notes of evidence did not align with the written grounds of judgment.

At first instance the firm acted for the accused in a High Court trial where, after evaluating the prosecution evidence at the maximum level, the court convicted, imposing life imprisonment from the date of arrest but ordering no strokes of the rotan because the accused was over fifty years of age, applying section 289(c) of the Criminal Procedure Code. The firm's record is a dedicated criminal-defence practice in capital drug matters, conducted across both languages of the courts.