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PUTRAJAYA: It is the end of the road for the widow of P Balasubramaniam, better known as PI Bala, who filed a lawsuit for “willful damage” against former Prime Minister Najib Razak, his wife Rosmah Mansor and six other people.
A three-member Federal Court bench chaired by Rohana Yusuf today rejected A Santamil Selvi’s application for a license to reinstate his lawsuit that was crossed out two years ago.
Rohana, who sat down with Harmindar Singh Dhaliwal and Rhodzariah Bujang, said the four legal questions raised for approval before the appeal had no merit.
However, the court did not order Santamil to pay the costs to the eight respondents.
This hearing was held virtually (via videoconference) due to the imposition of the conditional movement control order due to the Covid-19 pandemic in Selangor and the Federal Territories of Kuala Lumpur and Putrajaya.
On July 25, 2018, the Court of Appeals allowed appeals against his claim by Najib, Rosmah, Najib’s brothers, Mohd Nazim and Johari, lawyers Sunil Abraham, Cecil Abraham, Arulampalam Mariampillai, commissioner of oaths Zainal Abidin Muhayat and businessman Deepak Jaikishan.
So, the court had said that Santamil should have filed his lawsuit within six years from July 4, 2008.
That statute of limitations expired in July 2014.
Current Chief Justice Tengku Maimun Tuan Mat, who later headed a three-member bench, said it was also an abuse of process by Santamil to file the lawsuit again in 2017.
The Superior Court had previously refused to reject Santamil’s claim because the cause of the action was different from the first.
In 2017, Santamil and his two minor children filed another lawsuit against the same people he named in his previous lawsuit, claiming they suffered intentional harm as a result of their exile in India.
He said that these people had deprived his family of a normal life and caused them to suffer financial and non-financial losses.
Balasubramaniam was previously embroiled in a controversy over his two contradictory legal statements in the 2006 high-profile assassination of Mongol Altantuya Shaariibuu.
The former private investigator and key witness in Altantuya’s trial died of a heart attack on March 15, 2013, weeks after returning from India.
He had worked for Najib’s political analyst and partner Abdul Razak Baginda, who had hired him to monitor Altantuya prior to his disappearance.
