The two respondents were, at the material time, Police Officers: the first respondent being a Lance Corporal, L/Cpl. Romanus Clement Ungkin (Romanus) and the second respondent being an Inspector, Insp. Rechi a/k John Chuhing (Rechi). They were both attached to the Crime Section of the Royal Malaysian Police, Federal Territory of Labuan. In the Sessions Court, Romanus faced two charges under section 11(a) of the Anti Corruption Act, 1997: the first was against him alone while in the second charge he was charged jointly with Rechi. In the event, Romanus was convicted on the 1st charge and was sentenced to 14 days imprisonment and a fine of RM10,000 in default 6 months imprisonment. Both Romanus and Rechi were "discharged and acquitted" on the 2nd charge. It is against this decision that the Public Prosecutor is now appealing.

The 2nd charge reads as follows:-

"That you both jointly on 20th October, 1998 at around 3 pm at Chow Shiu Mechanical Engineering Workshop, Lot B2, Jalan Arsat, in the Federal Territory of Labuan, as an agent of the Government of Malaysia, to wit a Crime Section Police Officer, Labuan Police Contingent Headquarters, in furtherance of a common intention, did corruptly receive for yourself gratification, to wit a cash sum of RM740. from CHIN HONG KIN as an inducement for forbearing to take any legal action against CHIN HONG KIN who was said to have kept jackpot machines at CHIN HONG KIN'S workshop, and that you have thereby committed an offence under section 11(a) of the Anti Corruption Act 1997 and punishable under section 16 of the same Act (Laws of Malaysia No. 575) and read together with section 34 of the Penal Code."

Essentially Romanus and Rechi were jointly charged that they had acted with a common intention in receiving a sum of RM740 from the Chin Hong Kin on 20th October, 1998 at his workshop as an inducement for forbearing to take any legal action against the complainant who was said to be in possession of jackpot machines.

The submission of the Deputy Public Prosecutor is at enclosure 22 and this was read in full by him to the Court.

Two significant points need to be mentioned here and these are as follows:-

(1) the 1st respondent who was on bail failed to appear at all our hearings. His learned counsel, Mr. Rakhbir Singh could not reach him and consequently he was unable to get any instruction. He asked to be discharged and since there was no objection either from the learned Deputy Public Prosecutor representing the appellant, or the learned Encik Zahir Hussin Ahmad Shah counsel for the 2nd respondent, I allowed the request. In the meantime, a warrant of arrest was issued against the 1st respondent. With the concurrence of both parties, the appeal against the 2nd respondent had to go ahead considering that he was a suspended Government Officer there is a need to proceed on such cases expeditiously as after all the 2nd respondent was charged on 9th September, 1999, more than 5 years ago;

(2) learned counsel for the appellant applied for an amendment to the petition of appeal. After hearing arguments from both sides, I declined to grant the application for a number of reasons which include inter-alia:-

(a) Notice of Motion was not initially served on to learned counsel for the 2nd respondent and when it was finally served only two days notice was only given during which time the submission of the learned counsel for the 2nd respondent had been prepared and delivered to this Court;

(b) Following the decision in Jumari bin Mohamed v. PP which provides that such amendment should not be granted as a matter of course but on very exceptional circumstances as per Tee Ah Seng, J in Dyca ak Rawing v. PP

(c) Some 8 months delay in the filing of the application to amend the petition of appeal;

(d) Such application should be allowed in order that substantial justice may be done, see Veerasingam v. PP but I found that the ground for the delay in filing the application was not explained in the affidavit of

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