A three-man Court of Appeal bench chaired by Ahmadi Asnawi allowed Rozita’s application to stay the sentence due to exceptional circumstances.
The bench, however, ordered her to post RM25,000 bail in two sureties and impounded her passport. It also ordered her to report to the Damansara Utama police station once every two weeks.
Rozita filed the application saying that the Shah Alam High Court could not summarily revise her case when the public prosecutor had filed an appeal against the Sessions Court ruling.
Rozita, 44, had pleaded guilty on March 15 to voluntarily causing grievous hurt by dangerous weapons to her Indonesian maid, Suyanti Sutrinso.
Sessions Court judge Mohammed Mokhzani Mokhtar initially released her on a good behaviour bond for five years with a surety of RM20,000.
However, this sparked outrage among the public, with an online petition against the sentence attracting over 70,000 signatures.
On revision, judicial commissioner Tun Majid Tun Hamzah on March 29 ruled that the good behaviour bond imposed by the Sessions Court was incorrect.
Tun Majid said the lower court had wrongly considered the mitigating factor when Suyanti withdrew her police report during the trial.
Rozita has been in the Kajang Prison for the last two months since Tun Majid refused her a stay of execution of the sentence pending appeal.
Lawyer Mohamed Haniff Khatri Abdulla told reporters that the Court of Appeal would hear Rozita’s appeal against Tun Majid’s decision to impose the jail term by way of revision.
“We will argue that her appeal against the sentence should be sent back to the High Court to be heard,” he said.
A video of Suyanti, seriously injured and lying near a drain in a housing area in Mutiara Damansara, went viral in December 2016.
It was reported then that Rozita had allegedly used a kitchen knife, a clothes hanger, a steel mop and an umbrella to cause multiple injuries to Suyanti’s head, hands, legs and internal organs.
When contacted, Haniff explained that the exceptional circumstances were health-related and were valid in her case.
“She has neck and back pain which is reason enough to be out of prison.”
He also argued that sending her to prison would be wrong as she had appealed the earlier guilty verdict.