The National Registration Department (NRD) and Deputy Prime Minister Ahmad Zahid Hamidi may be looking at serious legal repercussions, including jail time, for their responses to the Court of Appeal's landmark decision regarding out of wedlock Muslim children.

Former Federal Court judge Gopal Sri Ram said both the NRD and Zahid may have committed contempt of court.

"The situation is not without remedy. The successful litigant may apply to the court to punish the offending person for contempt of court.  

"Where the contempt is serious and wilful, the usual punishment is imprisonment," Sri Ram told Malaysiakini.

The Court of Appeal on Thursday ruled to allow a seven-year-old child conceived out of wedlock to bear the father's surname.

It found that a National Fatwa Committee edict on the matter was not legally binding.

The NRD, however, said it would not abide by the appellate court's decision pending an appeal, despite the absence of a stay of execution.

"The judgment, in this case, was appealed.  But an appeal does not operate as a stay of execution. So the person against whom the order is pronounced has a duty to comply with it.

"The statement by the NRD that it will not comply with the order of the Court of Appeal is not only wrong but contumacious, and amounts to a wilful contempt of court," Sri Ram said.

Zahid said yesterday that Muslims must unite against individuals or "different legal systems" that opposed the fatwa committee's edicts.

"If the statement attributed to the deputy prime minister is accurate, then it also amounts to a serious contempt of court," Sri Ram said.

The former apex judge, who is now a senior lawyer, said that in his 50 years of practising law, he had never seen a government department or minister refusing to abide by the court's decision or make "inflammatory statements encouraging disrespect for court orders".

He said this was an unprecedented situation which had not occurred even during Dr Mahathir Mohamad's tenure as prime minister, despite the latter's "dislike" for the way courts interpreted the law.

Sri Ram said the three Court of Appeal judges who ruled in the case were very senior and experienced members of the judiciary whose decisions were well-respected.

Thus, he said, it was not right to "openly say that you are not going to comply with an order made by them".