Judge K Muniandy said convict Zuhaimi Basir will be evaluated and assessed medically before a decision is made on whether he can be whipped.

If he is unfit, the judge said, Section 291 of the Criminal Procedure Code allows the court to remit the whipping sentence and substitute it with a jail term.

He said Zuhaimi is to remain in prison until the court revises the previously-passed whipping sentence.

“Zuhaimi can only be whipped if he is in a fit state of health, otherwise the prison authorities will seek this court’s authority and jurisdiction to have the sentence of whipping varied to that of imprisonment,” he said in a judgment released last week.

If that takes place, he said, the accused would have to face an additional 13 months in jail in lieu of his sentence of 13 strokes of the rotan.

Muniandy said this was likely to happen in view of the accused’s medical condition, as noted in the report he had produced.

He made the remark when dismissing Zuhaimi’s appeal to do away with the whipping sentence on the ground that he suffers from a debilitating spine condition which has left him wheelchair-bound.

He had gone to court with a medical certificate from a doctor stating that he was unfit to be whipped and asked for the sentence to be converted to a jail term.

He said Zuhaimi’s appeal against the sentence, especially on the whipping, was premature.

The sessions court in Taiping had sentenced Zuhaimi to five years’ jail and 10 strokes of the rotan for drug possession.

He was also sentenced to two years’ jail and another three strokes of the rotan for a second count of possession.

The trial court ordered the jail terms to run concurrently, meaning he would serve only five years. However, Zuhaimi will be whipped 13 times.

Balakrishna Balaravi, of the National Legal Aid Foundation, represented Zuhaimi, while deputy public prosecutor Sariza Ismail appeared for the prosecution.