Kuala Lumpur, Aug 11, 2011: The Kuala Lumpur High Court today struck out the suit by the Bukit Jalil estate residents against Kuala Lumpur City Hall (DBKL) for using the Emergency Ordinance to evict them from their homes.

On March 14, the residents filed a suit against the Kuala Lumpur mayor, seeking a declaration that the plaintiffs had exclusive right and equity in the land and sought an injunction to prevent city hall from demolishing their homes.

On May 10, Zabariah dismissed their application for an interim injunction to stop City Hall from demolishing their homes.

However, they obtained an interim injuction from the Court of Appeal, pending their hearing of the appeal proper over the High Court's ruling. The Appeal Court heard the matter on Aug 10 and ruled against the residents.

The Bukit Jalil estate, formerly made up of 18,000 acres, was reduced to 26 acres after recent development of the land.

During the hearing of the injunction on April 27, the court was told that city hall had given 26 acres of the land to the Federal Territory Islamic Affairs Department to build a Muslim cemetery.

The residents' co-counsel Ragunath Kesavan had submitted that the residents were not squatters as they did not trespass on the land.

He said they had been living there for some time after the estate was sold to a private developer.

Ashmadi countered that the mayor was only carrying out his public duty by issuing the eviction notice and that the suit against the mayor was improper.

[Based on a Bernama report as appeared in Malaysiakini.com (http://malaysiakini.com/news/171018).]