Today the Sessions Court Judge of Kuala Kangsar, Tuan Johari Hassan, held that the accused, a Tamil school teacher by the name of Uma Mageswari A/P Periasamy @ Mayandy 31, is acquitted as the defence successfully raised a reasonable doubt.
She was charged for obtaining and retaining UPSR 2014 Science paper in her mobile phone. She was acquitted at the end of the prosecution case as the prosecution failed to prove a prima facie case. However, the prosecution appealed to the High Court of Malaya in Taiping, which allowed the Prosecution’s appeal and directed the accused defend herself in the Sessions Court.
By the time the case was sent back to Kuala Kangsar to proceed with the defence stage, the Defence team successfully applied to have the same trial judge who presided during the prosecution stage who have since been transferred to Sessions Court in Perlis, to come back to Kuala Kangsar and preside over the defence stage.
The Defence team also manage to get a world-renown expert in the field of Cybersecurity and Digital Forensic, Mr Fong Choong-Fook to testify in court on the evidence led by the Prosecution, namely the expert report regarding the analysis done on the Accused’s mobile phone prepared by MCMC.
It was pointed out that the report was unsafe to rely on by the court as it lacks material information regarding the phone analysis. He further stated in Court that the methodology of data extraction was not explained and the findings of the report were inconsistent and misleading, which he considers unsafe for the Court to rely on.
An example of such misleading findings was the access time of the impugned image was 12:00AM, but the image was created at 12:40PM of the same day. With the lack of explanation and details in the Digital Forensics Report, Mr Fong opines that it is not possible for an image to have access date/time before the creation date/time.
Mr Fong also pointed out that the was no mention or whatsoever that the phone was scanned by an antivirus/spyware, leaving the analysis unreliable with its integrity being questionable.
The Prosecution too elected not to call a Rebuttal witness to testify.
This case started in late 2014 and finally after nearly 4 years with 16 witnesses, judgment was delivered today.
After hearing all the witnesses and submissions by both Defence and Prosecution, Tuan Johari Hassan, held that the accused is acquitted as the defence successfully raised a reasonable doubt.
State Prosecution Director of Penang, Yusaini Amer prosecuted while the Defence team consist of M. Kula Segaran and Omar Kutty.
The whole ‘parade’ of charging school teachers for apparently ‘leaking’ or rather, obtaining and retaining 2014 UPSR exam question papers were most unsatisfactory. In Kuala Kangsar alone, 2 teachers were charged and 2 more in Seremban and 1 in Kemaman.
All of them were charged for obtaining and retaining the images of UPSR 2014 question papers. The person who leaked it, the actual culprit is still walking free. To date, the real culprit who had originally leaked the question has not been charged let alone arrested. How can this happen?
It is hoped teacher Uma will be reinstated immediately as soon as possible to her former job as a school teacher, without any delay. So time and money had been spent just for this case where it can be put to better use elsewhere.
This is the 2nd OSA case against a school teacher where the accused has been acquitted. One in Seremban has been found guilty while the others are still pending in Court.
It is hoped the Prosecution will not appeal against this decision as Uma has suffered enough agony for a crime she did not commit. There are better cases for the Prosecution to be focused on.