Amri Abdullah, convicted and jailed for cheating, has paid his dues to society.
Now he wants the Malaysian government to pay him his dues — $91-million for holding him an extra 217 days in jail because of an administrative error, a news report said on Thursday.
The 36-year-old ex-convict on Wednesday filed the suit against the Prisons Department and the internal security ministry, seeking 33 320 ringgit ($8 888) for each hour of freedom lost, 5 208 in all, and exemplary damages for an equal amount.
The claim works out to 173,5-million ringgit ($45,5-million) for each of the two claims, The Star reported.
Amri or court officials could not be immediately reached to confirm the report.
The Star said Amri, a former clerk, was sentenced to two years in jail on June 30 1994 for cheating a government body, and was ordered to return the money he had obtained from it fraudulently.
He failed to do so and was ordered to spend another year in jail — a total of 1 095 days. After a one-third remission of the sentence, he needed to serve only 730 days. However, he was kept in prison for 947 days because of an administrative blunder.
Amri, whose wife divorced him while he served the extended sentence, derived his claim based on a 1998 ruling in England where a Briton was awarded £5 000 for each of the two hours he had been unlawfully detained.
The Star did not say why Amri did not inform authorities he was being unlawfully detained when his sentence ran out. — Sapa-AP