A senior officer of the National Registration Department today admitted that the department committed an “error” by issuing a duplicate identity card to an impostor.

Testifying at the Kuala Lumpur High Court today, identity card department assistant director Ruslan Alias, however, said that the incident on Oct 15, 1990 was not due to “negligence”.

He had said this when cross-examined by the plaintiff’s lawyer, Yusfarizal Yussoff, in a civil suit by Mohammad Daud Salleh against the government for duplication of the latter’s identity card.  

Yusfarizal: I put it to you that the issuance of the duplicate identity card was on purpose?

Ruslan: I disagree.

Yusfarizal: I put it to you that the issuance of the duplicate identity card was due to negligence?

Ruslan: I disagree.

Judge Amelia Tee Abdullah: If it’s not on purpose and not due to negligence then what is it?

Ruslan: An error ( kesilapan ).

Duplicate issued after claim of lost IC

Ruslan, 53, testified that the duplicate identity card was issued to a man who claimed to have lost his identity card.

He said that based on the NRD’s records, the man had applied for the identity card in Klang and that Ruslan is “certain” that the man had produced the original copy of what he claimed to be his birth certificate.

However, he admitted the only person who can confirm that the original birth certificate, and not just a copy, was sighted would be the officer who accepted the application, one Michael R Raj.

Ruslan, an NRD officer of 30 years, further testified that the application was then sent to the headquarters in Petaling Jaya and approved by officer Azah Hassan.

He said that Azah would have approved it after verifying that the applicant’s photograph and thumbprint match those kept in the NRD’s records by making a manual visual comparison.

But he agreed with Yusfarizal’s suggestion that only Azah can ascertain if the verification process had taken place before the application was approved.

Ruslan said he does not know if Azah and Michael will be called as witnesses.

Unit set up for problematic ICs

He said that on Oct 15, 1990, the applicant had claimed that he lost his identity card, which was the first version used by the NRD, which had only seven digits.

The NRD began issuing plastic identity cards with 12-digit numbers in 1990 and one which bore the same name and number as the one held by the plaintiff was issued to the applicant.

The witness said that the department had started a unit for “problematic” identity cards in 1998, when more and more cases like mismatch of thumbprints and/or faces to the ones in its records were reported.

He also testified that problems include third parties using another person’s identity card, which he said made up “less than 50 percent” of the problems reported.

Earlier, senior federal counsel Suhaila Harun suggested to the plaintiff that he had in fact suffered little hardship when he was falsely detained by police for about 15 minutes in 1992.

This is because the plaintiff was arrested and jailed for keeping stolen goods and breaking and entering at night in the years 1992 and 1993.

NONE Disagreeing, Mohammad Daud ( right ) said that he had suffered some hardship, albeit less than his imprisonment, because he was nabbed at his mother’s house in his hometown in Perak in front of his neighbours.

He also disagreed that with the suggestion that he was more likely detained due to his criminal record and not because there is someone else using a duplicate of his identity card.

Mohammad Daud, 42, is seeking a court order for the NRD to cancel the identity card issued on Oct 15, 1990 and reimbursement and exemplary damages over the department’s “carelessness” that has resulted in fruitless trips to various government agencies to resolve the matter.

The taxi driver named then NRD director-general Kamaruddin Nordin, the current director-general, Home Minister and government as defendants.

The NRD had issued another MyKad with another number to Mohammad Daud in 2009, but this was refused as the plaintiff said this would affect his bank accounts, marriage certificate and children’s birth certificates.  

Ruslan will continue with his testimony tomorrow.

Forget PSC, royal commission is far better