A Santamil Selvi’s lawyer Manjeet Singh Dhillon said his client had also filed an application to disqualify lawyer Muhammad Shafee Abdullah from representing Deepak
“Shafee has been given until Dec 7 to file an affidavit in reply to Santamil Selvi’s applications,” he told reporters after a case management before a High Court deputy registrar today.
Sara Abishegam represented Shafee.
Deepak’s first defence dated Oct 25 was only served on lawyer Americk Sidhu, who first represented the widow and the children.
Subsequently Shafee, who was listed to appear for Deepak, filed the second defence on Nov 6.
Deepak’s first defence stated that Prime Minister Najib Razak and his wife Rosmah Mansor were the masterminds who had orchestrated the plaintiff’s exile to India in 2008.
However, the latest defence absolved the couple from any wrongdoing.
Americk had said the defence statements were “diametrically opposed” in material particulars.
Manjeet said he would now be co-counsel to Gopal Sri Ram in appearing for the plaintiffs’ as Americk could be a potential witness.
Santamil Selvi and her children have named Najib, Rosmah, Najib’s brothers Mohd Nazim and Johari, lawyers Sunil Abraham, Cecil Abraham, Arunampalam Mariampillai, commissioner for oaths Zainal Abidin Muhayat and Deepak as parties to her action.
The High Court is scheduled to hear on Dec 7 applications by all the nine defendants to strike out the suit.
Santamil Selvi, who is also acting for the estate of Balasubramaniam, filed the action in August for suffering intentional harm as a result of their exile in India.
She said the defendants had deprived her family of a normal life, and caused them to suffer financial and non-financial losses.
They claim to have suffered trauma and mental anguish caused by the defendants, and to have been deprived of a home in familiar surroundings.
Santamil Selvi, together with her two children, Kishen and Menaga, are seeking damages, with interest, for losses suffered from July 2008 as a result of their five-year displacement.
Balasubramaniam, who was better known as PI Bala, was previously embroiled in a controversy over his two conflicting statutory declarations (SD) in the high-profile 2006 murder of Mongolian model Altantuya Shaariibuu.
In the present suit, the family said the defendants had caused Balasubramaniam’s second SD to be drafted without his instruction and, further, caused him to sign it under threat and inducement.
He was forced to leave Malaysia for India in a hurry after signing the second SD in July 2008, a day after the first was released.
The second SD dated July 4, 2008, is supposed to have cleared Najib of any involvement in the case.
Balasubramaniam, in the second SD, said he wished to retract the entire contents of his first SD dated July 1, as it had been made under duress.
On July 3, 2008, Balasubramaniam told a packed press conference, organised by PKR, that the contents of the first SD, which implicated Najib and several others in the murder of Altantuya, were true.
Balasubramaniam, a key witness in the Altantuya trial, died of a heart attack on March 15, 2013, weeks after returning from India.
He had worked for political analyst and Najib associate Abdul Razak Baginda, who had hired him to monitor Altantuya before her disappearance.