Ashrul Haikal

On the court record

Ashrul Haikal appears in the reported corpus as counsel across criminal defence and civil litigation at the High Court and Court of Appeal. His criminal-defence work is concentrated in drug appeals: he was engaged as appellant's counsel in a Court of Appeal trafficking appeal under seksyen 39B(1)(a) Akta Dadah Berbahaya 1952 (section 39B(1)(a) of the Dangerous Drugs Act 1952), where the reported issues included a pre-condition under seksyen 32(1)(i) Akta Keterangan 1950 (section 32(1)(i) of the Evidence Act 1950), the absence of a forensic investigation into fingerprints and DNA on the drugs, section 8 of the Evidence Act 1950, and an alleged failure to call a material witness — a defence built on the gaps in the prosecution's forensic and evidential case.

His civil work engages questions of access to documents and the summary determination of legal issues. In one matter he was engaged on the court's own motion to dispose of a case on a point of law under Order 14A of the Rules of Court 2012, dispensing with viva voce evidence, in a dispute between two beneficiaries over the deceased's property. In another he appeared for a plaintiff seeking to obtain his own medical records from two defendants, relying among other provisions on regulation 44 of the Private Healthcare Facilities and Services Regulations, which governs a patient's access to medical records. Across these reported decisions his work moves between the defence of serious drug charges — where the argument turns on the sufficiency and integrity of the prosecution's forensic evidence — and civil litigation over estates and access to records, marking Ashrul Haikal as counsel across criminal defence and general civil work, equally engaged with the evidential foundations of a prosecution and the procedural routes to relief in a civil claim. Across these reported decisions the recurring thread is the sufficiency and integrity of the material relied on — the forensic gaps in a prosecution's case, the documentary basis for resolving a beneficiaries' dispute, the statutory right of access to records — marking a practice that scrutinises the evidential and documentary foundations of both criminal and civil claims.