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SINGAPORE – Lawyer M. Ravi filed a civil suit against the Attorney General (AG), two AG deputies and five prosecutors on behalf of a Malaysian drug trafficker who was not sentenced to death by the Court of Appeal last month.
Gobi Avedian, 32, who was instead given 15 years in prison and 10 strokes of the baton, is seeking unspecified damages from the defendants.
In court documents, Gobi alleged that the defendants “abused their powers and acted in bad faith by improperly performing a legal act that resulted in harm to the plaintiff.”
It also alleged that the defendants had “violated their fundamental duties to assist in the administration of justice.”
Nine defendants are named in the lawsuit: the attorney general’s office, current prosecutor Lucien Wong, deputy A-Gs Hri Kumar Nair and Lionel Yee, deputy chief prosecutor Mohamed Faizal Mohamed Abdul Kadir, and prosecutors Tan Zhongshan, Nicholas Wuan, Chin Jincheng, and Chong Kee En.
A spokesperson for the Attorney General’s Office (AGC) confirmed to The Straits Times that the court documents were delivered to him.
“The claims have no merit and we will defend them vigorously,” the spokesperson said.
The Court of Appeals decision last month was the result of a change in the legal position in 2019 on the doctrine of intentional blindness, as well as a change in the prosecution’s case against Gobi at trial and on appeal.
[[nid:505789]]Willful blindness is a legal term for the mental state of a person who suspects the truth but deliberately refuses to investigate further.
Gobi was originally charged with importing 40.22 g of heroin, after he was caught at the Woodlands checkpoint on December 11, 2014.
He evaded the death penalty for the first time in 2017 after the High Court determined that he did not know the nature of the drugs he was carrying and convicted him of a lesser charge.
In 2018, the higher court accepted the prosecution’s appeal and convicted Gobi of the original capital charge.
In 2019, in a separate case, Nigerian Adili Chibuike Ejike was saved from hanging after an appeal because it was found that he was unaware of the presence of drugs in his suitcase.
In Adili’s case, the Court of Appeal held that intentional blindness is not relevant in considering whether the presumption of possession has been rebutted.
Gobi, who was represented by Ravi, then asked the high court to review its 2018 decision.
Ravi argued that the ruling in the Adili case should be extended to the presumption of knowledge of the nature of the drugs, which was the legal problem in the Gobi case.
The high court agreed and overturned Gobi’s conviction on the capital charge. The court also held that the different cases brought by the prosecution were detrimental to Gobi.
[[nid:428915]]Following the Oct. 19 ruling, Ravi said in a video interview with alternative news site The Online Citizen (TOC) that prosecutors had been “too enthusiastic.”
On the same day, the AGC rebutted his claims, saying that the Court of Appeal explicitly stated that its decision to convict Gobi was correct at the time it was made.
The AGC demanded that Ravi apologize and retract his comments. He did neither.
On October 23, the AGC said it had filed a disciplinary complaint with the Law Society against Ravi for possible professional misconduct.
He added that the Court of Appeal did not find that the prosecution had acted in bad faith and that Mr. Ravi’s allegations were “false, misleading and unfairly and unlawfully discrediting AGC.”
This article was first published in The times of the strait. Permission is required for reproduction.
