The Kuala Lumpur High Court today dismissed an application by the former National Registration Department director-general, the Home Ministry and the government to strike out a suit by a cab driver over a case of duplication of his identity card.

Judicial Commissioner Lee Swee Seng made the decision in chambers after hearing submissions on the issue and ordered the case to go on full trial.

The court found that an element of negligence has been admitted and that there is a reasonable cause of action for the matter to go for trial.

Lee therefore fixed April 28 for case management, giving the defendants time to file their defence.

Earlier in open court, senior federal counsel Suhaila Harun admitted negligence on the part of the defendants resulting in the duplication of identity cards with the same name and identity card number.

“However, we have offered the plaintiff a new identity card with a new number with the middle digit bearing the number 36, replacing the original number 08 (from Perak),” she said.

“The person to whom the other identity card was issued cannot be detected,” said Suhaila in open court.

Lee noted there and then that this could be a case of “identity theft”.

It had earlier been reported that the defendants had applied to strike out out the suit, the hearing for which had been set for march 14.

12 year-problem

Lawyer Mohammad Zaid Daud told the court that the defendants cannot merely issue a new IC, as his client had been facing the problem for more than 12 years.

“We are not merely concerned over his future but also the known and unknown events that had happened to him in the past,” Zaid said.

NONE Zaid is assisted by another lawyer, Yusfarizal Yusof.

Plaintiff Mohammad Daud Salleh ( centre in picture ), from Gombak, named the former  and current NRD director-generals, the Home Ministry and the Malaysian government as defendants.

Apart from wanting the NRD to cancel the other duplicated IC number, he is also seeking reimbursement and exemplary damages over the department’s carelessness that has resulted in many fruitless trips to various government offices in sorting out the matter.

Yusfarizal told reporters outside the court that the government claimed that our system is the best in the world and is foolproof with the implementation of the chip-based IC.

“In such a case, how could there have been a case of duplication against my client? This is certainly a waste of taxpayers money where there has been negligence. We have spent a large amount to have such a system, only to see it being compromised,” he said.

Daud, 42, in his statement of claim alleged the identification theft had resulted in him being wrongfully arrested back in 1992 or 1993, over an apparent brawl in Ipoh, which he said he did not know anything about. The police only released him after he insisted that it was a case of mistaken identity.

His problems did not end there as when he changed to a MyKad in 2007 he received a Road Transport Department summons addressed to his house in Gombak, saying that he had been ‘caught’ speeding in a car with the registration number WLY3910 - a car which Mohammad Daud claims he never owned.

He then decided to conduct his own ‘investigations’, going to Bank Negara Malaysia and then Public Bank to check the loan status of the car, and to also present his case that he had neither taken a loan nor owned the car.

He also went to the RTD headquarters in Putrajaya, where he was shown a copy of a MyKad bearing the same number and name as his own, but with the photo and the address belonging to someone else.

Daud’s trip to the Commercial Crimes unit in Bukit Aman in April 2008 was also futile, when he alleged no investigations were conducted, to his knowledge.

It was only after two unknown men went to his house on July 29, 2008, to ‘renew the road tax’ for the WLY3910 car which they claimed to have bought, resulted in Daud lodging a police report four days later.

Bank claimed he had ‘defaulted in loan repayments’

Since then, he had received more calls from the bank, now claiming that he had defaulted in ‘car loan repayments’, as well as several more traffic compounds for the car. He also went to the Public Complaints Bureau, which had also failed to follow-up on his grievances.

In 2009 when he engaged Karpal Singh as his lawyer, the NRD got back to him and offered him a new IC number, to which he did not consent.

Refusing to change his IC number - which would result in changing all his official accounts with the banks, his licences and even his four children’s particulars - he is now fuming that the NRD’s solution is just a stop-gap measure which will cause more problems.

Following this, he engaged the firm of Zulpadli & Edham to pursue the matter further. Daud believes his dilemma is not the only such case in the country as there may be others who are in the same boat.

Related story

Cabby sues NRD over MyKad number 'duplication'