PUTRAJAYA:
It’s been a long journey for Muralitharan A/L Ramalingamand Pathmanthan A/L Ramasamy. They breathed a sigh of relief in the Court of Appeal today as the Prosecution accepted their representation and agreed to offer them a fine in lieu of imprisonment, subject to the Accused withdrawing the appeal against conviction.
The former employees of Shell Information Technology International SdnBhd were accused of launching attacks to the Shell servers with malicious scripts on two separate occasions causing system failures affecting 661 Electronic Data Servers. As a consequence, Shell had spent over RM3 million to restore the data servers.
They were charged under Section 5(1) of the Computer Crimes Act 1997 for unauthorized modification of the contents of a computer.
Their initial trial was held in the Shah Alam Session’s Court.
The verdict on 28 February 2014 found both men guilty of both charges. They were subsequently sentenced to 2 years imprisonment for each offence, to run consecutively.
Undeterred, the men appealed the decision to High Court.
On 18 September 2017, YA Dato’ Mohd Azman Bin Husin heard their arguments and rejected their appeal, affirming the conviction and sentence.
During the hearing of appeal on 16 February 2022, the Appellate Court had substituted the sentence of imprisonment with fine to both Appellants. They were represented by Dato’ Geethan Ram Vincent and Eu Kah Mun.