ALOR STAR: The High Court here today dismissed an appeal by a police sergeant against his conviction and sentence for corruption involving RM200 by the Special Sessions Court.
In dismissing the appeal, judicial commissioner Abu Bakar Katar upheld the conviction and 20 months’ jail sentence and RM20,000 fine on Azahar Abdul Aziz, 55.
In his judgment, Abu Bakar said the court, after studying all the records in the appeal and written submissions that were filed, found that the sessions court judge had acted correctly after ruling there was prima facie in the case at the end of the prosecution’s case.
He said the judge had also acted correctly at the end of the defence case in deciding that the appellant had failed to counter the presumption of the offence under Section 50 of the Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission (MACC) Act and the court confirmed the conviction by the sessions court.
“On the sentence, the court finds that the sentence imposed is not excessive,” he added.
Abu Bakar, however, allowed Azahar’s application for a stay of the sentence pending his appeal at the Court of Appeal and ordered lawyer Datuk Naran Singh, representing Azahar, to file the notice of appeal at the latest by tomorrow.
The court maintained Azahar’s bail of RM8,000 in one surety.
On Nov 12, 2017, the MACC’s Special Court judge Zanol Rashid Hussain sentenced Azahar, who was a detective sergeant at the Narcotics Branch in the Kulim police headquarters, to 20 months’ jail and RM20,000 fine after finding him guilty on two counts of accepting a RM200 bribe in 2015.
On the first count, he was charged with agreeing to accept RM200 from one Sulaiman Sahbudin as gratification to help reduce the sentence for a drug-related offence through a telephone call made at 5pm on Jan 13, 2015 at the Kulim branch of the National Anti-Drug Agency office.
The second charge was for dishonestly agreeing to accept the bribe from Sulaiman for the same purpose at 6.50pm on the same day at nasi kandar restaurant in Kulim. — Bernama
