IPOH: The Sessions Court here today set three days from Dec 21 to hear the case involving Tronoh assemblyman Paul Yong, who is charged with raping an Indonesian maid.
Judge Norashima Khalid set the new dates after being informed that two of Yong’s lawyers, Rajpal Singh and Salim Bashir, had problems attending today’s proceeding due to the implementation of the conditional movement control order (CMCO) in the Klang Valley.
Yong was represented today by lawyers Farhan Sapian and Surindar Singh, while the prosecution was represented by state prosecution director Azhar Mokhtar.
Norashima also set Nov 20 for mention of the case.
Farhan told reporters later the defence was waiting for the Federal Court to set a new date to hear its appeal to transfer the case from the Sessions Court to the High Court.
The hearing had been fixed for last Wednesday but was vacated because of the CMCO.
Yong, a former Housing, Local Government, Public Transport, Non-Muslim Affairs and New Villages Committee chairman, had pleaded not guilty in the Sessions Court on Aug 23 last year to raping the maid at a house in Meru Desa Park between 8.15pm and 9.15pm on July 7, 2019.
On Feb 10 this year, the Court of Appeal dismissed Yong’s appeal to transfer the case on grounds that there was no appealable error by the High Court judicial commissioner in refusing Yong’s application to transfer the case to the High Court. -FMT