The High Court today struck out a suit brought by Kelantan prince Tengku Muhammad Fakhry Petra against the police and government over his alleged wrongful arrest, as the prince and his lawyer failed to turn up in court.

Judge Nor Bee Ariffin made the decision after allowing the application by the police and government to strike out the suit, and ordered Tengku Muhammad Fakhry, who is a younger brother of the Sultan of Kelantan, to pay RM5,000 costs to all the defendants.

Senior federal counsel Azizan Md Arshad and Andi Razalijaya A Dadi, representing the defendants, told reporters they asked the suit to be struck out due the absence of Tengku Muhammad Fakhry and his newly-appointed lawyer when the case came up for case management.

“The court and the defendants confirmed that there was no new solicitor on record representing Tengku Muhammad Fakhry. The court struck out the suit with liberty to file afresh,” said Azizan.

He said lawyer Nizam Bashir, who had acted for Tengku Muhammad Fakhry, had withdrawn. The High Court, on Sept 17, granted the lawyer’s application to withdraw from representing the prince.

On May 3 last year, Tengku Muhammad Fakhry filed the suit against Musa Hassan, who was the inspector-general of police at the time of the incident, the government and 13 police officers, claiming he was wrongfully arrested on May 4, 2010, while in a car at the main gate of Istana Mahkota and heading for the airport.

He also claimed that some of the defendants had pointed their firearms and shouted at him and ordered him to surrender, before taking him to the Kota Baru district police headquarters where he was detained in a room for about an hour.

In his statement of claim, the prince alleged that he was also asked to surrender his gun but he told the defendants that he had left it in his room at the palace.

He also claimed that he was accompanied by policemen to Istana Mahkota to get the gun and then taken back to the police station before being allowed to return to the palace at midnight.

The prince contended that he was neither given food nor allowed to contact his lawyer while being held at the police station and that he was seeking general, special, exemplary and aggravated damages, costs, interest and other relief deemed fit by the court.

All the defendants, in their statement of defence filed on July 12, 2013, stated that only two of them had stood beside the prince and that at no time did they point their weapons at him.

The defendants maintained that the arrest of the prince was legal.

- Bernama