SINGAPORE — The Attorney-General’s Chambers (AGC) has written a letter to lawyer M Ravi, demanding that he apologise and unconditionally retract allegations he had made about the public prosecution in a video interview. 

In a media statement on Tuesday (Oct 20), the AGC said the allegations Mr Ravi made, in which he said the prosecution handling his client's case had been “overzealous”, were “false and highly inflammatory”. 

“It is highly improper and entirely contrary to Mr Ravi’s obligations as an officer of the court for him to make these unfounded, baseless and misleading allegations,” said the AGC in its statement. 

In the interview with socio-political site The Online Citizen (TOC) on Monday, Mr Ravi was commenting on the prosecution of his client Gobi Avedian, who faced drug-related charges. 

That same day, the 32-year-old Malaysian had escaped the gallows, as the Court of Appeal had reviewed an earlier decision to give him the death penalty, and reinstated his original High Court sentence of 15 years’ jail and 10 strokes of the cane.

Speaking in a video posted on TOC’s Facebook page, Mr Ravi said: “The prosecution, in prosecuting people especially for (the) death penalty — it is extremely important that you must be fair to both sides, the accused and the state. So therefore, balancing this, the state has been overzealous in its prosecution, the public prosecutor has been overzealous in this prosecution and that has led to the death sentence of Gobi.”

On Monday itself, the AGC had responded, saying Mr Ravi’s claims were “categorically false”  and that he had “sought to mischaracterise the reasons for the decision issued by the Court of Appeal”.

Following up on Tuesday, the AGC demanded that he retract the allegation that the prosecution had been “overzealous” as well as other claims, including:

• that the public prosecutor should apologise to Gobi for the suffering he had gone through

• that it was “troubling” that the public prosecutor ran a different case before the High Court and the Court of Appeal 

• that “the fairness of the prosecution is called into question” by the Court of Appeal's latest decision.

“These are serious allegations that the public prosecutor has acted in bad faith or maliciously in the prosecution of the applicant,” said the AGC on Tuesday. 

The AGC noted that the Court of Appeal had made no adverse findings against the public prosecutor handling Gobi’s case.

It reiterated that the Court of Appeal had pointed out in its judgement that the initial decision to convict Gobi was “correct at the time (it was) made” and that none of the arguments considered in the judgment “could have been made in view of the legal position as it was understood” at the time.

The AGC has given Mr Ravi until noon on Thursday to respond. 

When approached by TODAY for a comment, Mr Ravi pointed to his latest Facebook post, in which he had written that he is entitled to his criticisms and to make his professional views known. 

He said he has taken instructions from Gobi to commence proceedings against Attorney-General Lucien Wong, Deputy Attorney-General Hri Kumar and the public prosecutor in court. 

He added that the AGC owes him an apology for sending this letter of demand, as it amounts to an act of humiliation against Gobi and his family.

“The public should demand the AG retract this letter and apologise,” he wrote.