Private investigator P Balasubramaniam’s widow A Santamil Selvi will withdraw her counter-suit against Prime Minister Najib Abdul Razak and seven others, after her lawyer Americk Singh Sidhu withdrew from the case.

“My lawyer withdrew. So I think I too want to withdraw. I make this decision voluntarily, without coercion,” she told reporters at her house in Taman Pelangi, Rawang, today.

She said Americk offered himself as her counsel out of sympathy and because he was friends with her late husband.

She claimed that it was Americk’s idea to file the counter-suit and he never asked for payment.

“I just want to continue life without having to depend on anyone anymore,” Selvi added, stressing that no one pressured her to call today’s press conference.

Americk ( photo ) had helped PI Bala to draft his first statutory declaration, which linked Prime Minister Najib Abdul Razak to the 2006 murder of Altantuya Shaariibuu.

Bala then signed another statutory declaration recanting this, and fled the country with his family.

He returned in 2013 and reaffirmed his first statutory declaration, before dying of a heart attack.

However, the police had cleared the prime minister of any involvement in the Altantuya case.

Selvi had, in 2014, filed a suit for RM1.9 million, seeking damages from Najib, his wife Rosmah Mansor, Najib’s brothers Ahmad Johari and Nazim, lawyers Cecil Abraham and M Arulampalam, businessman Deepak Jaikishan and commissioner of oaths Zainal Abidin Muhayat.

The suit was based on claims that a conspiracy involving those named forced Selvi, Bala and their three children to flee into exile from 2008 to 2013.