S Shashi Kumar, president of the Global Human Rights Federation (GHRF), had sought to prosecute the duo for allegedly insulting the faith and religious practices of non-Muslims.
Justice Ahmad Zaidi Ibrahim, who delivered the appeals court’s broad grounds of judgment today, said magistrate Redza Azhar Rezali was not obliged to examine Shashi under Section 133 of the Criminal Procedure Code (CPC) three years ago.
He said this was because the public prosecutor had classified the complaint against Zamri as requiring no further action (NFA). Likewise, he said no examination could be conducted on Firdaus as investigations into the complaint against him were still ongoing.
Zaidi said that under Section 135(3) of the CPC, a magistrate should dismiss a complaint when the public prosecutor informs the court that he does not intend to proceed with a prosecution.
Further, the judge said judicial time would be wasted if the magistrate proceeded to examine Shashi given the NFA classification in respect of the case against Zamri.
Zaidi also said a complainant must obtain the public prosecutor’s consent to initiate private prosecution, but that none was secured in the present case.
“The appeal has no merit and is hereby dismissed,” said Zaidi, who sat with Justices Nazlan Ghazali and Zaini Mazlan.
The appeal arose after the High Court in Shah Alam last year dismissed Shashi’s appeal from the magistrate’s decision not to examine him over his complaints.
Lawyer S Ravichandran represented Shashi while deputy public prosecutor Soleha Noratikah Ismail appeared for the prosecution.
Soleha had in May informed the bench that the prosecution did not intend to pursue a case against Firdaus.
Shashi had sought to prosecute Firdaus for allegedly insulting persons of the Hindu faith through postings on Facebook and YouTube.
In a statutory declaration, he said a police report was lodged against Firdaus in January 2018 over postings of the video on the two social media platforms.
In a separate statutory declaration, Shashi said he had also lodged a police report against Zamri in June 2020 for allegedly insulting Hindu rituals and practices via postings on his Facebook account.
Shashi said he had inquired with the police as to the status of his reports against the duo but received no response.