KUALA LUMPUR: A Royal Commission of Inquiry into the claim that a judge here had plagiarised from a Singapore judge would be a waste of time.
G.P. Selvam, whose judgment in a 2000 case is the centre of the controversy, said this in refuting DAP chairman Karpal Singh's accusation of lying on the matter to Chief Justice Tan Sri Arifin Zakaria.
On Jan 6, The Star published a statement from the Chief Justice's Office saying Selvam had written on Nov 2 to say he had no cause to complain about plagiarism.
The next day, the daily quoted Karpal accusing the retired Singaporean judge of lying, as it contradicted his statement published in the Singapore Straits Times in 2000.
In that article, Selvam was quoted as saying a Malaysian judge had obtained a copy of his judgment through a lawyer and had “copied chunks from me without acknowledging”, and that the judge had backdated his judgment so “people will think I copied from him”.
In his rebuttal statement, Selvam yesterday said a mutual friend had told him on Aug 28 last year that Karpal would be contacting him about the Malaysian judge and gave him his number.
He said he called Karpal who said, in effect, that he wanted to move for the removal of the judge on the ground of plagiarism.
“He wanted a copy of the complaint I had lodged. I thought he was going to move the court.
“I told him, in effect, that I had not made any complaint to anyone, so I could not help.”
Selvam said he told Karpal there was a minor error in the 2000 report in that the Malaysian judge had “got my judgment before it was reported and not released.”
He said he told Karpal there was no cause for complaint for plagiarism but the lawyer did not agree.
Selvam said the original report was in relation to certain offhand reflections he had made while hearing a copyright infringement case, on the limits of copyright in relation to judgments.
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