luyar pinapatangkid...

Report against lawyer over NCR land Published on: Friday, May 11, 2012  Email to a friend      Printer Friendly Kota Kinabalu: A group of 23 villagers of Kg Leningkong, Telupid lodged a police report here against their lawyer who they claimed had misled them and caused their appeal to secure Native Customary Rights (NCR) on 1,150 acres of their village land to be withdrawn. Their spokesperson, Timor @ Suman bin Ambang, 71, who lives in the village about 98 miles from Sandakan, said the lawyer failed to explain in detail all the contents of a statutory declaration to him (Suman) which resulted in their appeal case being withdrawn from being heard here. He was one of the two plaintiffs representing the villagers to claim for NCR on the concerned village land against three respondents - two are companies and the Assistant District Officer in Telupid when the case was heard in Sandakan in 2003. They lost the case. "In March this year, the lawyer contacted me and asked us to come down to his office here. Since I could not contact the rest, I decided to go on my own and see him (lawyer) in the office here. "Instead, he (lawyer) brought me to the respondents' lawyer's office and I was asked to sign a document without my lawyer explaining the contents as he (lawyer) just asked me to sign it. "Then a cheque for RM100,000 was given to me as 'wang ehsan' (goodwill money) and it is in four bank accounts belonging to me and three other villagers. But we have never touched or used the money," he said to Daily Express when met after lodging the report at the Karamunsing police station here, Thursday. Suman claimed that he was never informed or notified by the lawyer that the RM100,000 cheque was meant for withdrawing the appeal case that had been filed in 2009. Furthermore, he said, he had never directed the lawyer and his legal firm to withdraw the appeal. Suman also denied a statement in the Statutory Declaration that the plaintiffs were not serious in pursuing the appeal of the case, when in reality, they want to their case to be heard here. "I am lodging this police report here for myself and all the individuals involved in the case for police further action and for other authorities, particularly the court here, to hear our appeal case," he said, adding that they only discovered that their case heard in Sandakan was not in their favour, last month.