Despite Karpal’s death, Anwar has five days left for sodomy appeal in apex court
V. Anbalagan, TMI
The late Karpal Singh’s funeral is today but his most famous client, Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim, has a more pressing matter at hand – to meet a deadline this Friday to appeal against his sodomy conviction by the Court of Appeal.
The petition has to be filed in the Federal Court by April 25.
Karpal, 73, died in a road accident on the North-South Expressway near Kampar, Perak early Thursday morning. He was on his way to Penang to represent a client in a murder trial and spend the weekend meeting constituents in his Bukit Gelugor parliamentary seat.
PKR legal bureau head Latheefa Koya (pic) told The Malaysian Insider she had spoken to lawyer Zaleha Al-Hayat who was in Karpal’s legal team on how best to assist in the drafting of the petition of appeal.
“We are also studying the Court of Appeal judgment to contribute to the grounds of appeal,” she said.
Latheefa said a meeting would be held with Anwar on the next course of action, including assembling a formidable legal team to argue the appeal in the Federal Court.
“For now our concern is to file the petition on time but we could also apply for an extension of time due to exceptional circumstances,” Latheefa said.
On Wednesday evening, hours before the accident which killed him and his personal aide Michael Cornelius, Karpal told The Malaysian Insider at his office in Kuala Lumpur that he would file the petition on April 24.
His legal firm had received the grounds of judgment on Wednesday which marked the beginning of the 10-day period to file the petition of appeal.
Karpal had said he would draft the grounds where the Court of Appeal had gone wrong in setting aside the acquittal of Anwar by the High Court while he was in Penang.
The lawyer said he needed time to go through the written grounds as it was a 85-page judgment.
