SINGAPORE, June 21 — The High Court has dismissed former domestic worker Parti Liyani’s bid to seek S$10,000 (RM30,900) compensation from the Attorney-General’s Chambers (AGC) — an application that was the first of its kind here.
In dismissing it on Monday (June 21), Justice Chan Seng Onn said that Ms Parti, 47, who was acquitted of stealing from the household of prominent businessman and former Changi Airport Group chairman Liew Mun Leong, had not succeeded in proving that the prosecution was frivolous or vexatious.
Justice Chan pointed out that an objective Deputy Public Prosecutor (DPP) would have considered that there was sufficient evidence to render the case fit to be tried before the court, adding that the court “must not be distracted by hindsight reasoning”.
Justice Chan said that Ms Parti’s assertions failed to meet the “high threshold” of proving that the prosecution was frivolous or vexatious.
They “merely relate to (her) dissatisfaction” with how the prosecution was conducted by the DPPs, he said.
Under the Criminal Procedure Code, Ms Parti, an Indonesian, could have received compensation of up to S$10,000 if the prosecution was found to be frivolous or vexatious during her trial.
Her lawyer, Mr Anil Balchandani, had argued in the case’s hearing in April that the prosecution withheld evidence at trial, made purposeless attacks, and went “full steam ahead” with charges even when evidence was insufficient.
He said then that these were all behaviours that show “improper motive” and are not befitting of the public prosecutor’s role as “ministers of justice”, when the prosecution should provide as much information as possible to assist the court to arrive at a correct decision — not to secure a conviction at all costs.
Arguing that Ms Parti’s prosecution fitted “squarely” into the definitions of frivolous and vexatious, Mr Balchandani said that this case presents an “exceptional opportunity” that can pave the way for other acquitted appellants to seek redress for problems they faced at trial.
Ms Parti, in particular, had suffered losses of more than S$70,000 because she had been unable to work for the past four years due to the criminal proceedings, he revealed last October.
However, Deputy Chief Prosecutor (DCP) Mohamed Faizal Mohamed Abdul Kadir argued that there is no credit to Ms Parti’s application as the word “prosecution” in the Criminal Procedure Code relates to the decision to prosecute, instead of the prosecution’s conduct at trial.
Pointing out that there was no apparent reason for the complainants to frame her, he had said that the charges brought against Ms Parti were “not obviously unsustainable or wrong”.
One aspect of the defence’s case, that she had been set up by the Liew family, was never mentioned in any of Ms Parti’s statements to the police or in the case for the defence, and arose in a somewhat piecemeal and belated fashion during trial, he also said. — TODAY
