JUDGMENT

Ramly Ali, Azahar Mohamed, Rohana Yusuf, Tengku Maimun Tuan Mat, Nallini Pathmanathan FCJJ:

Introduction

[1] This is our judgment in respect of the Honourable Attorney-General's application dated 28 February 2019, seeking an order of committal against Arunachalam Kasi ('Arun Kasi') for contempt of court, more particularly, scandalising contempt.

[2] The grounds upon which this application was made was that Arun Kasi had scandalised the Federal Court of Malaysia by making various allegations regarding judicial conduct in the hearing, disposal and adjudication of a civil application before the Federal Court on 7 November 2018 in two articles published online by a news portal known as Aliran.

[3] The thrust of the Attorney-General's originating summons is that Arun Kasi's statements in these two articles insinuate that the Federal Court Judges who heard and allowed the application to expunge portions of the dissenting judgment were guilty of misconduct, involved in corrupt activity and had compromised their integrity, to the extent that an investigation by the Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission ('MACC') was warranted. The MACC is a statutory body established to investigate into offences of corruption. These insinuations were made in both the articles published by Aliran.