Mr J Ong Hock Thye, in the course of his judgment, reviewed a number of decisions of Courts of Malaysia and India (where the Indian Evidence Act is in similar terms) which disclosed a considerable variety of judicial opinion as to the degree of certainty in the non-existence of a fact which must be induced in the mind of the Court to entitle a defendant to an acquittal where a statute expressly imposes upon him the onus of proving that it does not exist. It was because of these differences of opinion that special leave to appeal was granted.

In Malaysia, as in India, the law of evidence has been embodied in a statutory code: the Evidence Ordinance. In so far as any part of the law relating to evidence is expressly dealt with by that Ordinance the Courts in Malaysia must give effect to the relevant provisions of the Ordinance whether or not they differ from the common law rule of evidence as applied by the English Courts. But no enactment can be fully comprehensive. It takes its place as part of the general corpus of the law. It is intended to be construed by lawyers, and upon matters about which it is silent or fails to be explicit it is to be presumed that it was not the intention of the legislature to depart from well established principles of law.

Although in the judgment of the Federal Court and in the cases cited in the course of that judgment there are references to i Woolmington v. Director of Public Prosecutions [1935] AC 462 that authority is not in their Lordships' view germane to the present appeal. It was concerned with an offence at common law, not with an offence as to which there is an express statutory provision altering the ordinary onus of proof which in a criminal case lies upon the prosecution and imposing upon the defendant the burden of proving the existence or non-existence of a particular fact by way of defence.

Where a defendant is charged with an offence under s. 4(a) of the Prevention of Corruption Act 1961, to which s. 14 also applied, the onus lies upon the prosecution to prove the first two factual ingredients of the offence viz. (1) that a gratification was paid or given to or received by the defendant and (2) that at the time of the payment, gift or receipt he was in the employment of a public body. Upon proof of these two ingredients the existence of the third ingredient, viz. (3) that the gratification was paid or given or received corruptly as an inducement or reward for doing or forbearing to do an act in relation to the affairs of that public body, is to be presumed "unless the contrary is proved".

This appeal turns solely upon the construction of these words "unless the contrary is proved.

The third ingredient which is to be presumed to exist unless the contrary is proved is a "fact" within the definition of that word in the Evidence Ordinance. That Ordinance provides in s. 2 that it "shall apply to all judicial proceedings in or before any Court" with certain exceptions which are not material to the present case. Accordingly wherever a Malaysian enactment contains provisions relating to judicial proceedings for a criminal offence any reference in those provisions to the proof of facts must, in their Lordships' view, be construed in the light of any relevant definitions in the Evidence Ordinance.

The relevant definitions are:-

'proved'; A fact is said to be 'proved' when, after considering the matters before it, the Court either believes it to exist or considers its existence so probable that a prudent man ought, under the circumstances of the particular case, to act upon the supposition that it exists.

'disproved'; A fact is said to be 'disproved' when, after considering the matters before it, the Court either believes that it does not exist or considers its nonexistence so probable that a prudent man ought, under the circumstances of the particular case, to act upon the supposition that it does not exist.

'not proved'; A fact is said to be 'not proved' when it is neithe