Alwi bin Abdul Wahab

On the judicial record

An appellate judge whose reported corpus is anchored in murder and drug appeals while extending into commercial, administrative and revenue matters.

Justice Alwi bin Abdul Wahab sits in the Court of Appeal (Mahkamah Rayuan), and the reported decisions in this corpus combine criminal appeals with commercial and administrative ones. Murder appeals recur, including appeals confined to sentence where convictions under section 300(c) read with section 34 of the Penal Code were not challenged and the High Court had imposed the death penalty, and appeals turning on whether the trial judge misdirected himself as to the common intention of a second appellant under section 34.

Drug-trafficking appeals under section 39B of the Dangerous Drugs Act 1952 are well represented, including appeals over the trafficking of cannabis and methamphetamine that turn on the chain of custody of the exhibits, the presence of a statutory caution, and the appellate court's power to interfere with the trial court's findings on possession and knowledge.

Commercial and administrative appeals round out the docket. A privity-of-contract dispute concerns an appellant whose original contract with a local authority was novated to a concessionaire, leaving no direct contractual relationship with the government respondents. An arbitration appeal examines whether a Director-General of Insolvency, as liquidator, is required to adopt an arbitration agreement under section 49 of the Arbitration Act 2005. Land-acquisition questions arise where an acquisition was later revoked under section 10A of the Land Acquisition Act 1950, and judicial review touches the reduction or termination of a public appointment. Revenue law appears in a challenge to additional tax assessments and the taxability of allowances. Contract-illegality appeals also come before the panel, including sale-and-purchase agreements said to be sham transactions disguising unlicensed moneylending contrary to the Moneylenders Act 1951. The corpus reflects an appellate judge whose reported work is anchored in the criminal calendar — murder and narcotics appeals in particular — while extending into commercial, administrative and revenue appeals, each decided on whether the court below applied the correct legal test to the facts it found rather than on a fresh trial of the dispute.