Datuk N. Sivananthan

On the court record

A trial-and-appellate criminal practice concentrated on drug-trafficking and homicide defence in the High Court and Court of Appeal.

Datuk N. Sivananthan practises as criminal counsel, appearing across both the High Court (Mahkamah Tinggi) and the Court of Appeal (Mahkamah Rayuan) in the reported decisions collected here. The bulk of the work is capital and serious drug litigation: charges of trafficking under "seksyen 39B(1)(a) Akta Dadah Berbahaya 1952" (section 39B(1)(a) of the Dangerous Drugs Act 1952), frequently read with "seksyen 34 Kanun Keseksaan" (section 34 of the Penal Code, common intention) and, in a firearms matter, with the Firearms (Increased Penalties) Act. In these trials the recurring battleground is possession and knowledge of the drug exhibits, the statutory trafficking presumptions, and the reliability of an agent provocateur under "seksyen 40A" of the same Act.

At trial he generally acts in the defence of the accused, testing whether the prosecution has made out actual possession before any presumption can be triggered. On appeal the profile is mixed: he has appeared as appellant challenging conviction and sentence, and as respondent resisting a prosecution appeal against an acquittal. Beyond drugs, the corpus records homicide work engaging "seksyen 300" of the Penal Code and its Exception 4 (sudden fight), and evidentiary arguments under "seksyen 114(g) Akta Keterangan 1950" (section 114(g) of the Evidence Act 1950), the provision permitting an adverse inference where a party withholds evidence.

Taken together, the reported matters describe a busy trial-and-appeal criminal practice weighted toward drug-trafficking and homicide defence, conducted mainly in Kuala Lumpur and the appellate courts. The work is fact-heavy and turns on the chain of custody of exhibits, the drawing or rebutting of statutory presumptions, and the sufficiency of the prosecution case at the close of its evidence, rather than on any single point of settled law. In one reported matter three persons were jointly charged with trafficking; two co-accused were discharged and released while the third was convicted and sentenced to a long term of imprisonment, illustrating how, in a multi-accused trial, the thread of possession and knowledge has to be untangled accused by accused before any presumption can bite.