Lawyer Karpal Singh has denied lodging any complaint with the Chief Justice Office to investigate the plagiarist judge issue, expressing surprise at the latter’s decision today that the complaint had no merit.

“It is clear from the correspondence exchanged that I had not made a complaint to the chief justice (CJ) for an investigation.

NONE“I am surprised that the chief justice has stated that after an investigation, there is no basis to my complaint which has been dismissed pursuant to section 13(1) of the Judges’ Code of Ethics, 2009,” said the senior lawyer in a statement this afternoon.

Karpal also questioned the CJ for citing the Code of Ethics, 2009 as the alleged act of plagiarism took place in 2000 prior to the code, saying the “code is not retrospective in operation”.

The DAP national chairperson and Bukit Gelugor MP explained that his communications with the CJ’s Office had merely been to respond to the latter’s enquiry on his correspondence with the errant judge on the issue.

He said he initially sent letters dated Aug 22 and Sept 29 to the judge, Abdul Malik Ishak,  expressing his intention to move against him in Parliament, which were later forwarded to the CJ and the president of the Court of Appeal because he felt the matter was “of serious concern to the judiciary”.

This prompted the CJ’s office to write to Karpal on Oct 13 asking for specific information about the issue, including case references and contents of the allegedly plagiarised judgement.

The lawyer replied with the reasons for the parliamentary motion and a copy of the motion, but the motion later lapsed.

“By letter dated Dec 7 to the CJ, I indicated that the motion under Article 127 in Parliament had lapsed on Dec 1, and therefore could not be discussed, leaving me no alternative but to seek other measures to resolve the matter,” said Karpal.

Karpal said his latest move was to write an open letter on Dec 27 challenging Abdul Malik to either resign or file a defamation suit against him in seven days, failure being taken as an admission of guilt.

“Abdul Malik has the option to sue me for defamation before the ultimatum I have given him in my open letter expiring on Jan 3. The ball is in his court. Let us see how he deals with it.” 

Why no action from law minister?

Earlier today the CJ's Office had announced that they had found "no merit" to Karpal's alleged complaint about the judge.

Karpal had earlier called on the said judge to resign over the plagiarism allegations.

According to the lawyer, the errant judge had, plagiarised a former Singapore judge GP Selvam’s judgment as his own, ironically over a case of copyright.

Karpal added that the law minister at the time, Rais Yatim, had publicly admitted that he knew about the plagiarism allegations in 2000.

“It is surprising that the minister on his own admission did not take any step to direct a proper investigation despite having had four years to do so! That appears to be the quality of our ministers!” he said.