Dato' Rajpal Singh a/l Mukhtiar Singh

On the court record

Dato' Rajpal Singh a/l Mukhtiar Singh's reported practice is in serious criminal defence, including capital cases, appearing in the Federal Court and the High Court and acting for appellants and accused persons.

A significant matter is a Federal Court appeal in a prosecution for rape under section 376(1) of the Penal Code, in which he acted for the appellant. Beyond the offence itself, the appeal raised a constitutional challenge to the procedure under section 265A(2) and (3) of the Criminal Procedure Code — whether those provisions are unconstitutional, and whether denying the appellant the right to be heard at the inquiry stage they establish violates the principles of natural justice entrenched in Articles 5 and 8 of the Federal Constitution.

He also acts in capital trials. In related High Court matters, in which he acted for the accused, several accused faced multiple charges. The court convicted the first accused on all three charges and another accused on two of them, and imposed the death sentence — recorded in the court's own words as "hukuman gantung di leher sehingga mati" (death by hanging) — on those charges. Acting for the accused in such proceedings involves testing every element the prosecution must prove, because the consequence of conviction is the most severe the law can impose.

Across these matters the practice is criminal defence at the most serious end of the spectrum — capital prosecutions and offences carrying grave penalties — carried out at both trial and apex-court level. The recurring work is twofold: to test whether the prosecution has proved each ingredient of a grave charge, and, where the procedure itself is in question, to challenge the constitutionality and fairness of the process by which an accused is tried and sentenced. It is defence work in which the stakes are as high as the criminal law allows, and the margin for error correspondingly small.