Harshaan Zamani

On the court record

Harshaan Zamani appears in the corpus across civil execution, serious crime and defamation, argued in the High Court (Mahkamah Tinggi) and the Court of Appeal (Mahkamah Rayuan). One High Court matter, appearing for the plaintiff, concerned a stay of execution complicated by a preliminary issue of contempt: whether a party against whom a prima facie finding of contempt had been made must purge the contempt before he can be heard, weighed against the right to be heard, and where no leave had been obtained to commence contempt proceedings; the stay itself, sought where both parties were appealing the same judgment, engaged the familiar considerations of special circumstances, nugatoriness, the merits of the appeals and whether refusing a stay would destroy the substratum of the appeal. A Court of Appeal matter, appearing for the appellant, was a 'Rayuan terhadap sabitan dan hukuman' (an appeal against conviction and sentence) in a drug-trafficking prosecution under section 39B(1)(a) of the Dangerous Drugs Act 1952, where the accused had been sentenced under section 39B(2) to 30 years' imprisonment from the date of arrest; the appeal asked whether the defence had been sufficiently considered by the trial judge and whether the judge had erred in his decision. A third matter, again in the Court of Appeal and appearing for the appellant, was a defamation appeal that raised whether the principle in Derbyshire County Council v Times Newspapers Ltd barred a public figure from suing, whether statements alleging religious subversion and national betrayal lowered the plaintiff in the estimation of right-thinking members of society, whether an indirect or collective reference — the word 'MEREKA' (them) — reasonably identified the plaintiff, whether a speech at a public university forum was a publication, and how the defences of justification, fair comment and qualified privilege applied. The profile is that of a broad advocate across execution, capital crime and reputation.