A three-member bench chaired by Justice Zabariah Yusof upheld Firdaus Mohsin’s drug trafficking conviction and dismissed his appeal against it.

In delivering the court’s decision, Zabariah, however, set aside the death sentence imposed on Firdaus and commuted it to 30 years in prison.

Firdaus, 40, was also ordered to be given 12 strokes of the rotan.

Justices Harmindar Singh Dhaliwal and Abdul Karim Abdul Jalil were the other judges who heard the matter, which had come before the apex court following the abolition of the mandatory death penalty last year.

In December 2021, the Shah Alam High Court convicted Firdaus of drug trafficking along Jalan Bukit in front of the Kajang KTMB train station in Hulu Langat, Selangor, at 10pm on March 28, 2017.

The Court of Appeal upheld Firdaus’s conviction and death sentence on Aug 2 last year.

According to the facts of the case, a police officer approached Firdaus and asked him to open his bags, leading to the discovery of several slabs of compressed dried leaves in one of them. These were later confirmed by the chemistry department to be cannabis.

In his defence, Firdaus claimed that the bag did not belong to him but to an Uber driver. He said he was taking care of it while waiting for the driver to park the car.

He claimed he had travelled from Penang to Kuala Lumpur to attend an event and was waiting for his uncle to pick him up and take him to his house in Sungai Ramal, Kajang.

During the trial, the Uber driver, Sabri Salleh, testified that he received a booking from Firdaus through the Uber app to send him from KL Sentral to the Kajang KTM station.

He said he saw Firdaus carrying the bags and placing them beside him in the back seat of the car.

Deputy public prosecutor Zulkipli Abdullah appeared for the prosecution while Firdaus was represented by lawyers Rafique Rashid Ali and Nur Mustahir Nor.