The High Court in Temerloh has set aside a man’s conviction of raping a teenager more than a decade ago, ruling that the sessions court had committed an error in law.
Justice Roslan Mat Nor found that the conviction of Azmir Mirza Mahmud was unsafe, as the identification parade took place 12 years after the alleged offence and was of too poor a quality to reliably confirm him as the culprit.
He said the sessions court also failed to take the long lapse of time into account when finding the accused guilty.
“The long gap in time cannot alter the fact that there were changes which may affect the truthfulness and accuracy of the victim in identifying him,” he said in his 68-page grounds of judgment.
Azmir, 43, was accused of raping a 16-year-old girl on July 31, 2010, at her home in Kampung Ulu Jelu, Raub. He was arrested 10 years later and sentenced to 12 years in prison and six strokes of the rotan.
Prosecutors said Azmir had entered the home to commit robbery and threatened the teenager before raping her.
Roslan also found that the lower court had erred by accepting the victim’s testimony in full without corroborating evidence, despite labelling her as “unusually convincing”.
“The sessions court cannot take a ‘simple’ approach in ruling that a witness’s testimony is unusually convincing solely by hearing his or her (version of events) without looking at other evidence,” he said, adding that references need to be made to past case laws.
While Azmir’s DNA was found at the scene, Roslan said this only proved that he had been there, not that he had committed rape.
The forensic doctor confirmed that there was penetration, but no proof suggesting that Azmir was responsible for it, the judge said.
