KUALA LUMPUR – Malaysian-Singapore Workers task force president Dayalan Sreebalan risks being jailed after allegedly failing to comply with a court order prohibiting him from making videos deemed defamatory.
He has been sued by MIC leaders Tan Sri S. Vigneswaran and Datuk Seri M. Saravanan over Facebook clips in which he criticises the two.
The allegations are centred around funding for Tamil schools and purportedly sexist statements that Dayalan said MIC made against an assemblyman named “Kamatchi”.
The suit by Vigneswaran and Saravanan was filed in December last year.
In the same month, the plaintiffs filed an application for an ex parte injunction against Dayalan.
An ex parte injunction is a court order for a person to stop doing a particular action, and requires only the applicant to be present.
The particular action by Dayalan that Vigneswaran and Saravanan want stopped is making defamatory statements against them.
The MIC duo were successful in obtaining a temporary injunction.
However, court filings showed that Dayalan failed to appear for an inter partes injunction hearing, which requires the presence of the defendant.
“On February 6, 2021, clearly going against the injunction order, the defendant published a video in which he makes defamatory statements against the plaintiffs,” said a court document.
According to the plaintiffs, among the defamatory statements is Dayalan saying a minister got his position through the “back door”.
They contend that he acted in contempt of court.
A request for committal proceedings was filed by the plaintiffs against Dayalan on February 11.
Committal proceedings empower the courts to hold a person in contempt for refusing to obey a court order.
It remains to be seen whether the application is successful. – The Vibes, February 14, 2021
