Kalyana Kumar Sockalingam

On the judicial record

A clear guide to how a High Court judge moves between drug and sexual-offence prosecutions, Order 53 judicial review of disciplinary and forfeiture decisions, and civil-procedure and tort disputes.

Kalyana Kumar Sockalingam sits in the High Court, and this collection blends serious criminal work with a varied civil and administrative list, authored in a mix of English and Bahasa Malaysia. On the criminal side, drug prosecutions under section 39B(1)(a) of the Dangerous Drugs Act 1952 recur, including a matter resolved on a plea of guilty where the court weighed the discretion between the death sentence and imprisonment. Sexual offences feature through charges under section 14(a) of the Sexual Offences Against Children Act 2017, read with section 16, and the offence of rape of a minor under section 376(1) of the Penal Code, where the court addressed whether sentences for separate offences should run concurrently or consecutively. Criminal appeals engage the mandatory duty of a court under section 308 of the Criminal Procedure Code where grounds of judgment were absent. Judicial review is a strong strand: challenges under Order 53 of the Rules of Court 2012 to the reduction in rank of a public officer under the public-service disciplinary regulations, and to the seizure of property by the police under section 32 of the Dangerous Drugs (Forfeiture of Property) Act 1988. Tort and civil procedure round out the list, including a road-accident liability appeal in which the trial court had the audio-visual advantage of the witnesses, an application for pre-action discovery of CCTV recordings under Order 24 rule 7A, and striking out under Order 18 rule 19 for want of a reasonable cause of action or a properly pleaded allegation of fraud. Private individuals and accused persons are referred to by role; corporate, governmental and statutory parties are named. A recurring theme is the court's insistence on procedural regularity — properly pleaded fraud, grounds of judgment, the correct disciplinary process. The collection is a clear guide to how a High Court judge moves between serious crime, judicial review and civil procedure.