Lawyer and Ipoh Barat MP, M Kulasegaran wants a five-member Court of Appeal (COA) bench to review a decision made by an earlier panel ordering teacher L Subbarau @ Kamalanathan to enter his defence on a charge of leaking the Ujian Pencapaian Sekolah Rendah (UPSR) examination three years ago.

Kulasegaran said the review application was filed at the COA yesterday.

“Normally a review of a COA decision for cases originating in the Sessions Court will be heard by a three-member bench. A request for a five-member bench is unprecedented," Kulasegaran pointed out. 

Kulasegaran said while the COA written majority judgment was out last Wednesday, the grounds for minority decision is not out.

He added that today the case came-up at the Seremban Sessions Court before judge G Ramesh," where we sought a postponement for the case because a review of the COA decision has been filed yesterday".

“To our utter surprise, the DPP objected to our application on grounds that the COA decision is not final and my client has two avenues to appeal if found guilty: the application was not done immediately following the decision on May 25th this year, and there must be fairness to the prosecution,” he said.

“We replied we can humanly make the application yesterday as the grounds of the decision was given five days back.

"Our application is neither frivolous nor vexatious,” he said.

He said it was difficult for the defence lawyers to foresee the grounds of judgment, in order to prepare the grounds for review application.

He added, Ramesh, then allowed the adjournment and fixed Oct 6 and 13th as continued hearing dates.

Kulasegaran said they see no urgency in this trial as the review application should take its course and precedence.

Besides Kulasegaran, the other lawyers who appeared for Subbarau were Nicole Tan and Vemal Arasan while DPP Wan Shaharuddin Wan Laden appeared for the prosecution.

It was reported that the COA by a majority decision ordered Subbarau to enter his defence on six counts of having images of leaked UPSR exam papers three years ago.

Justice Mohatarudin Baki who headed the panel ruled along with Justice Vernon Ong that the classification of the examination papers under the Official Secrets Act (OSA) were in order, while Justice Harminder Singh Dhaliwal dissented.

Subbarau was acquitted by the Sessions Court and the decision was upheld by the Seremban High Court, only for the COA to reverse its decision.