JUDGMENT

Eddie Yeo Soon Chye JC:

[Encl 82: Plaintiff's Application to Amend Writ And Statement Of Claim]

Background

[1] This is the Notice of Application by the Plaintiff filed on 20 August 2025 under O 20 r 5 and O 92 r 4 of the Rules of 2012 for the following orders:

(a) That the Plaintiff be granted leave to amend the Writ and Statement of Claim both dated 25 January 2022 as shown in Annexure A and B, respectively that is annexed to this notice of application.

(b) Costs be in the cause;

(c) and such other and further reliefs as this Court may deem fit and proper.

[2] The grounds of this application are as follows:

(a) The application seeks to add the surname/father's name of the 1st Defendant in the Defendant's name appearing at the intitulement and to add "/in the brand name of" after "trading as" and before "Thisaigal TV" in the description of the 1st Defendant there - both in the Statement of Claim and Writ. This is to render it complete as per his NRIC. There is no prejudice to the 1st Defendant by this amendment, which does not cause any substantive change, as he always knew the claim was addressed to him, entered appearance, and defended the claim as the 1st Defendant without any objection on this point, and acknowledged himself as the owner of Thisaigal TV at the material time. At the time the action was filed, the 1st Defendant's full name as per his NRIC was not available to the plaintiff, nor did the 1st Defendant give that in response to the pre-action letter dated 1 November 2021 issued by Arun Kasi & Co on behalf of the plaintiff.

(b) The application also seeks to correct a typographical error by adding "not" before "selected" in the fourth sub-paragraph of the first para 7 of the statement of claim, which provides a written translation in English of the alleged defamatory broadcast. This was a genuine typographical error and caused no confusion to the 1st Defendant as his version of the translation itself has the "not" and he effectively pointed out this error in his pleading, and effectively the plaintiff conducted the trial on the basis that the "not" is added there. As such, there is no prejudice to the 1st Defendant by the amendment.

(c) The application seeks to prefer the spelling of "Vanniar" to "Vanniyar" or "Vanieer" (all referring to the same Tamil caste) to refer to the Tamil caste in the English translation of the broadcast included in the Statement of Claim, for consistency between the registration certificate of the relevant association "Persatuan Kebajikan Vanniar Malaysia". There is no prejudice to the 1st Defendant by this as both refer to the same caste without any confusion and effectively sound alike, and they are different spellings with which one may write down the word with English alphabets when the word is originally pronounced in Tamil.

(d) The application seeks to include the transcript in Tamil and Bahasa Malaysia translation of the broadcast via two annexures (Annexure 1 and 2) to the Statement of Claim. There is no prejudice to the 1st Defendant by this as the English translation of the relevant defamatory statement was provided in the Statement of Claim, and also the Bahasa Malaysia version and Tamil transcript were subsequently provided in the bundles of documents. Further, the 1st Defendant himself provides his version of the Bahasa Malaysia translation in the bundles of documents. The proposed annexure now for Tamil transcript adopts the version already included in the bundle and not rebutted with any alternative version from the 1st Defendant. The proposed annexure now for the Bahasa Malaysia translation adopts the 1st Defendant's version in the bundles subject to a caveat that the word "Vanniyar" there referring to the caste may be spelled "Vanniyar" or "Vanniar" or "Vanieer".

(e) The proposed amended version of the Statement of Claim also incorporates two cosmetic corrections of typographical nature, allowed or made during the trial, namely changing the word "case" to "caste" in the E