The Court of Appeal has upheld the acquittal of businessman N. Narendran, 46, on 122 charges of cheating and using forged documents, dismissing the prosecution’s final appeal.
The three-member panel of Justices Azman Abdullah, Hayatul Akmal Abdul Aziz and K. Muniandy unanimously affirmed the Ipoh High Court’s January 2022 decision to set aside his conviction.
Delivering the decision, Muniandy said the High Court had correctly applied the burden of proof and the relevant legal principles. He said the absence of a guilty mind at the start of the transactions, material contradictions in the charges and the lack of forensic evidence of forgery made the Sessions Court conviction unsafe.
He added that because the forgery charges were tied to the cheating allegations the prosecution had failed to prove, those charges also fell away.
Narendran had faced 105 counts of cheating a man by deceiving him into believing that Perak state government purchase orders for supplying disposable medical equipment to a hospital in Ipoh were genuine, inducing him to hand over cheques and cash of between RM20,000 and RM350,000 each in 2015. He also faced 17 counts of using forged state government purchase orders.
The Ipoh Sessions Court had sentenced him in April 2021 to 10 years’ jail and 24 strokes of the cane before the High Court acquitted him on appeal.
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