Appeals Court Upholds Six-year Imprisonment Of Lawyer, Husband For Forgery

PUTRAJAYA, Aug 30 (Bernama) -- The Court of Appeal has upheld the six-year imprisonment of a lawyer and her husband convicted of using forged documents as genuine to facilitate a property transfer eleven years ago.

In a 24-page grounds of the judgment dated Aug 27, which was posted on the Judiciary’s website, a three-judge panel of the Court of Appeal dismissed the application by the couple because the charges had been properly framed and were not defective, wrong in law or illegal.

The panel comprised Justices Datuk Ahmad Zaidi Ibrahim, Datuk Azmi Ariffin and Datuk Dr Choo Kah Sing.

K. Parminder Kaur, 62, and her husband T.S. Bir Singh, 66, had sought the review, claiming that they had been convicted and sentenced to prison under a defective charge.

They contended that their imprisonment should not exceed two years.

In December last year, the Court of Appeal agreed to hear the review based on a single legal question: whether the penalty for an offence under Section 471 of the Penal Code is prescribed in Section 465 instead of Section 467.

The couple claimed that for an offence charged under Section 471 of the Penal Code, the punishment section ought to be Section 465 and not Section 467.

The punishment under Section 465 of the Penal Code is imprisonment for a term which may extend to two years or a fine or both.  Whereas, the punishment under Section 467, is imprisonment for a term which may extend to 20 years and a fine.

In the judgment, Justice Dr Choo said it is common knowledge that the public prosecutor has vast power to institute criminal proceedings, including to select the offence to be charged.

He said in the present case, the public prosecutor had opted to charge the appellants for using a forged document and that the forged document falls within the specific class of documents listed in Section 467.

Therefore, Justice Dr Choo said the charge and the punishment section were properly framed within the ambit of the law.

Parminder was convicted by the Sessions Court on April 18, 2018,  for using a forged document as genuine to transfer a piece of property located in Bukit Permata in Gombak, Selangor.

She committed the offence at the Selangor Lands and Mines office in Shah Alam on April 10, 2013.

Bir, a former pilot, was convicted of abetting her in committing the offence.

The Sessions Court sentenced both of them to nine years in prison. Their appeal was dismissed by the High Court on July 4, 2019.

On July 10 last year, a different Court of Appeal panel partly allowed the couple’s appeal. The Court of Appeal reduced the nine-year imprisonment to six years but maintained the conviction finding.

-- BERNAMA