The High Court in Kuala Lumpur today fixed April 17 to hear Prime Minister Najib Abdul Razak's application to strike out a portion of former MCA president Dr Ling Liong Sik's defence.

The date was fixed by Justice Nordin Hassan today who took over the case from Justice Nor Bee Ariffin who is now at the Family High Court.

Justice Nordin also fixed April 24 to 26 for the hearing of the suit. This was disclosed by Ling's lawyer Ranjit Singh to Malaysiakini when contacted today.

It was previously reported that Ling, the former transport minister, had failed to strike out the suit by Najib after Justice Nor Bee had on March 16 asked the matter to go to trial for full determination on whether Najib had filed the suit in his personal or official capacity.

Najib filed the suit in October 2015 following Ling's comments alleging the PM had taken public funds.

Following this, Ling had asked the PM to resign. Ling then applied to strike out Najib's suit on the grounds that the Umno president and BN chairperson had filed it in his official capacity as prime minister, instead of his personal capacity as mentioned in the statement of claim.

Meanwhile, at another High Court, Justice Ahmad Zaidi Ibrahim fixed April 3 for his decision on whether to grant an extension of time to former Umno Batu Kawan leader and now Citizens Declaration coordinator to submit further documents for his suit against Najib 's wife Rosmah Mansor (below, right), businessperson Low Taek Jho and 1MDB over a pink diamond allegedly bought with 1MDB funds.

Lawyer Damian Chan who appeared for Khairuddin (below, left) together with solicitor Messrs Syed Iskandar Syed Jaffar Al Mahdzar sought time to reply to the defendants' application to strike out their suit and to adduce further documents from a Singapore court proceeding.

Justice Ahmad Zaidi had last month dismissed Khairuddin's application to cross-examine Low or better known as Jho Low.

Khairuddin's US$23.7 million suit seeks to direct Rosmah to return a 22-carat pink diamond necklace set allegedly bought with 1MDB funds.

He alleged that between June 2013 and March 2014, Low had acted through his agent, Eric Tan, to purchase jewellery from Lorraine Schwartz in New York for the sum of US$27.3 million which Khairuddin said came from misappropriated 1MDB funds.

Khairuddin claimed that the necklace was given to Rosmah sometime in March 2014 and that it should be returned to 1MDB, along with the return of the money Low allegedly misappropriated from the sovereign wealth fund.

He added that since Rosmah gave no consideration to the said necklace, she has no title in law or equity to it, meaning that 1MDB was entitled to have it back.

The pink diamond was mentioned in the US Department of Justice's Forfeiture Action in July last year to recover misappropriated 1MDB funds.