Barred From Leaving Country Housewife Wins Appeal To Reinstate Suit

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The Court of Appeal today allowed a housewife’s appeal to reinstate her negligence lawsuit against the Immigration Department director-general and the government of Malaysia.
This was after she was wrongly identified as a bankrupt and prevented from travelling abroad.
A three-member bench led by judge Collin Lawrence Sequerah ruled that S Sumathi’s suit was not an “obvious and unsustainable” case that warranted being struck out.
He said Sumathi had complied with the requirements of the Government Proceedings Act, which stipulates that a public officer involved in the matter must be properly named in the lawsuit.
In this case, he said, the director-general of the Immigration Department was correctly identified as the public officer as required under the Interpretations Act.
Sitting with judges Faizah Jamaludin and Nadzarin Wok Nordin, the court awarded Sumathi RM15,000 in legal costs.
One of Sumathi’s counsels, M Hariharan, told the media that the case has been sent back to the Sessions Court for a full hearing.
On May 21, 2024, the Sessions Court struck out Sumathi’s suit on the grounds that she had failed to name the immigration officer who stopped her at the departure gate as a defendant. The High Court upheld that decision on March 3 this year.
Sumathi, 44, had filed the suit naming the Immigration Department director-general and the government of Malaysia as defendants.
Same name and birthday, different IC number
In her statement of claim, she said that on Nov 25, 2022, she and 16 members of her family were at Kuala Lumpur International Airport (KLIA Terminal 1) to board a flight to New Delhi, India. Except for her, all her family members were able to pass through the automated immigration passport gate.
She claimed that she was barred from boarding the flight after a check by an officer on the department computer system showed that she was a bankrupt and had been blacklisted from leaving the country.
She also claimed she was left behind as her family departed without her. The next day, she visited both the Insolvency and Immigration Departments, which confirmed that she was not the individual on the blacklist.
She later learned that the actual blacklisted person shared her name and date of birth but had a different identity card number, with the final digits differing from hers. Sumathi then purchased a new ticket and flew to India two days later to rejoin her family.
In their statement of defence, the Immigration Department director-general and the government maintained that their records were accurate and updated regularly.
They claimed that their officers on duty had acted appropriately from the moment Sumathi arrived at the departure hall counter, throughout the interrogation process, and in the steps taken to prevent her from continuing her journey.
Apart from Hariharan, lawyer M Manoharan also represented Sumathi, while senior federal counsel Siti Syakimah Ibrahim appeared for the Immigration Department director-general and the government.
- Bernama

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