I read with great interest the letter from Mohamad Rizal Abd Rahman entitled Understanding the Anwar judgment which was in reply to my own letter Court believed in Anwar's sexual shenanigans .

I accept (as I always have, even without Rizal's erudite explanation, for which I am grateful) that:

the Federal Court found unproven the accusation that Anwar committed sodomy as charged;

in a judgment, ratio must be distinguished with obiter ; and

evidence is different from proof.

However, the context in which I referred to the paragraph in the judgment - in which the majority judges said that they find evidence to confirm that Anwar and Sukma were involved in homosexual activities and that they are more inclined to believe that the alleged incident at Tivoli Villa did happen - was in response to a statement by former prime minister Dr Mahathir Mohamad that he always believed that Anwar was involved in homosexual activities.

In this context, the question was not proof, but given that two respected Federal Court judges stated that they believe as Mahathir does (even if it was after they had read the appeal record) whether that belief of the former prime minister exists in the realm of the ludicrous or whether it was a reasonable one.

Readers of the judgment can draw their own conclusions.

Finally, may I ask whether Rizal would accept that even obiter dicta (which is without a doubt in the category into which the belief statements referred to of the majority judges) may have great force and persuasion if they emanate from the highest court of the land and highly respected judges?

Which first-year law student does not know that the decision which opened up claims to purely economic loss (irrecoverable before) sprung from the landmark judgment of Hedley Byrne v Heller [1964] AC 465, from the obiter pronouncement of Lord Morris of Borth-y-Gest in the House of Lords?

Would learned counsel dare assume at it as being merely obiter dictum ?