Sunthrarat a/l Segar & Anor v Pendakwa Raya

Appellant(s):

• Sunthrarat A/l Segar
• Prakash A/L Tanabal

Respondent(s): Pendakwa Raya

• YA Dato' Azmi Bin Ariffin
• YA Datuk Mohd Radzi Bin Abdul Hamid
• YA Dato' Ahmad Shahrir B. Mohd Salleh

• Two appellants were convicted under section 39B(1)(a) of the Dangerous Drugs Act 1952, read with section 34 of the Penal Code, for trafficking in dangerous drugs (62.3 grams of Heroin and Monoacetylmorphines) in furtherance of common intention, and were each sentenced to life imprisonment and 15 strokes of the cane.
• Police, acting on information obtained during an unrelated murder investigation, raided a hut in a forest where the appellants were found seated close together amid drug-packaging paraphernalia, with an operational generator and sealing machine; the second appellant attempted to flee and threw a bottle at the raiding officer.
• The appellants' defence was a bare denial, claiming they were tending cattle nearby and were arrested elsewhere before being brought to the hut; they also highlighted that the hut later burned down and three motorcycles linked to their relatives (found near the hut) disappeared while they were in custody.

• Whether the prosecution proved exclusive possession of the drugs beyond reasonable doubt, given the hut was in an open forest area potentially accessible to third parties, and whether the subsequent fire and disappearance of motorcycles created a reasonable doubt as to possession at the material time.
• Whether alleged omissions in the arrest report and seizure list (as opposed to the raiding officer's oral testimony) amounted to material contradictions capable of undermining his credibility, and the correct legal distinction between an "omission" and a "contradiction" in contemporaneous police documents.
• Whether the prosecution's failure to call the registered owners of the motorcycles and the landowner warranted an adverse inference under section 114(g) of the Evidence Act 1950.

• The Court of Appeal held that the active, ongoing nature of the drug-packaging operation observed by the raiding officer (operational generator, sealing machine, and appellants seated close to the drugs) rendered the possibility of unknown third-party access highly improbable, and that the post-arrest fire and missing motorcycles were more consistent with the existence of accomplices destroying evidence than with negating the appellants' possession at the material time.
• The Court distinguished between omissions and contradictions in documentary evidence, holding that the arrest report's and seizure list's silence on the packaging activity and the bottle-throwing incident constituted mere omissions (not contradictions), and that arrest reports/first information reports are not intended to be exhaustive; the "persecution theory" against the raiding officer was rejected for want of any proven motive or prior acquaintance with the appellants.
• The Court held that no adverse inference under section 114(g) of the Evidence Act 1950 was warranted since the uncalled witnesses were not essential to complete the prosecution's narrative and had in any event been offered to the defence; the trial court's findings on possession, the statutory presumption of trafficking under section 37(da)(iiia), rejection of the defence, and the sentence imposed were all upheld, and the appeal against conviction and sentence was unanimously dismissed.