Narkunavathy Sundareson

On the judicial record

A High Court judge whose reported decisions pair grave drug-trafficking trials with a wide judicial-review practice spanning planning, land, constitutional and preventive-detention challenges.

Justice Narkunavathy Sundareson sits in the High Court (Mahkamah Tinggi), and the reported decisions in this corpus divide between serious criminal trials and public-law judicial review. On the criminal side, the court conducts full trials — a bicara penuh jenayah (a full criminal trial) — in drug prosecutions charging trafficking under seksyen 39B(1)(a) Akta Dadah Berbahaya (section 39B(1)(a) of the Dangerous Drugs Act) together with possession charges under seksyen 12(2) (section 12(2)). The judgments work through the ordinary structure of such a trial: whether the prosecution has proved a kes prima facie (a prima facie case), the calling of the accused to enter a defence — dipanggil membela diri (called to defend himself) — and the assessment of the defence that follows.

The judicial-review docket is substantial and varied. Decisions address challenges to development orders granted by a local authority under the Town and Country Planning Act 1976; applications for leave to challenge decisions refusing the alienation of State land, met by preliminary objections on standing; and constitutional challenges to statutory provisions said to contravene Articles 8, 121(1) and 149 of the Federal Constitution. Preventive-detention and restriction orders also come before the court by way of permohonan substantif untuk semakan kehakiman (a substantive application for judicial review), where applicants complain that no proper inquiry was conducted under the governing security legislation and that the investigating officer failed in his statutory duties.

The combination is characteristic of a busy High Court criminal and public-law list: grave narcotics trials decided on the evidence at each stage, sitting alongside administrative and constitutional review of executive and municipal decisions. One judicial-review decision concerns a challenge to a restriction order made under preventive-security legislation, where the applicant complained that no complete investigation had been carried out under the relevant sections and that the investigating officer had failed to gather required material. The judgments are notable for tracing the procedural stages of each matter closely — from prima facie case to defence in the criminal trials, and from leave to substantive hearing in the reviews — rather than resolving them on a single point.