Karpal wants MACC lawyer cited for contempt of court

By Asrul Hadi Abdullah Sani - The Malaysian Insider

SHAH ALAM, Jan 15 — The Teoh Beng Hock inquest took a bizarre twist today, when a hearing on an application to cite a senior MACC officer for contempt turned into an attempt to charge the MACC lawyer instead.

Earlier, counsel representing the Attorney-General’s chambers Tan Hock Chuan told the court that no action would be taken against Thai forensic pathologist Dr Pornthip Rojanasunand.

He added that the A-G did not think Dr Pornthip had leaked any information to Suara Keadilan.

Coroner Azmil Muntapha Abas then said there was no longer a need to proceed with contempt proceedings against MACC’s Raub Ghani, who had lodged a police report against Dr Pornthip for allegedly leaking the results of the second post-mortem on Teoh Beng Hock.

Lawyer Karpal Singh, representing Teoh’s family, then started to argue that contempt proceedings against Raub should still proceed as the A-G’s opinion seems to suggest the MACC officer had lodged a false police report against Dr Pornthip.

At this point, lawyer for the MACC Datuk Abdul Razak Musa stood up to protest Karpal’s use of the word “murder”, but Karpal asked him to sit down as he had the floor and Razak did not have the right to interrupt.

Karpal (in wheelchair) was insulted for his disability. — Picture by Choo Choy May

Razak then retaliated by saying: “I can sit down but you cannot stand up.”

This angered Karpal’s son and fellow lawyer, Gobind Singh Deo, who immediately protested and ordered Razak to apologise.

After a heated exchange, Razak finally apologised but this did not satisfy Karpal. He argued that insulting a member of the Bar is in contempt of the court.

However, the coroner reasoned that Razak had apologised and it was up to Karpal to accept the apology or not, before adding there was no need to bring contempt charges against Razak and that the lawyer should just be cautioned.

Karpal’s other co-counsel Malik Imtiaz, however, urged the coroner to reconsider his decision because this will lead to a precedence whereby a Bar member can be insulted in court.

The judge agreed and gave Karpal half an hour to provide previous case rulings to support his motion for Razak to be held in contempt of the court.

“Of course, he apologised but in my mind his apology is not sincere and we wanted a more severe punishment against Datuk Razak because we do not want this to become a precedent,” he told reporters outside the court room.

The court will resume after a break.