Pejabat Penasihat Undang-Undang Negeri Terengganu

On the court record

The Pejabat Penasihat Undang-Undang Negeri Terengganu (the Terengganu State Legal Adviser's Office) appears in the reported judgments as prosecuting and state counsel, working mainly in the High Court (Mahkamah Tinggi) with matters in the Court of Appeal (Mahkamah Rayuan). Its criminal docket is evidence-heavy and covers outraging modesty under section 354 of the Penal Code, drug possession — including methamphetamine and psychotropic substances — with appeals against conviction and appeals by the prosecution against an acquittal where the question is whether a prima facie case was made out, and dangerous driving causing death under the Road Transport Act 1987. A distinctive civil strand of the office's corpus concerns waqf (Islamic endowment) land: disputes over a wakaf ahli (family waqf) and wakaf zuriat and whether a body's members are legitimate beneficiaries, and the doctrine of istibdal (the substitution of waqf property), argued against the State government and religious authorities. The office also appears in compulsory land-acquisition challenges, in the recovery of land and the limitation defence under section 9 of the limitation legislation, in proceedings under Order 89 of the Rules of Court 2012 against occupiers, in questions of the locus standi of a registered society, and in administrative-law declaratory relief. The counterparties and parties in the corpus include the State government, religious and community bodies, and corporate parties. Acting as prosecutor and as counsel for the State and its authorities, the office presents in the corpus as a state legal office whose work joins criminal enforcement to a distinctive body of waqf and land litigation particular to the religious and land administration of the State. The waqf matters are especially notable, since they require the civil courts to engage with the Islamic law of endowments — the classification of a family endowment, the identification of its beneficiaries, and the doctrine of istibdal permitting the substitution of endowed property — questions rarely litigated elsewhere in the corpus. Its prosecution appeals against acquittals, meanwhile, show the office testing at the higher courts whether a trial court was right to find that no prima facie case had been made out.