He said this while commenting on Kelantan’s decision to implement public caning on Shariah offenders in two months’ time, with its Shariah court chief judge Datuk Daud Muhammad claiming that it will be the first state in Malaysia to do so.
While he could not provide an exact figure on the public canings carried out, Jasri said at least one case in the Tawau Shariah court in 2016 involved two offenders.
“Another sentence in Tawau court in 2014 was postponed, as the woman was certified by medical officers as pregnant. I am not sure if it was carried out afterwards,” he said, adding that public caning was recommended by the Prisons Department, as the woman was not being imprisoned.
Jasri added that there were two public canings conducted at prisons here in 2011 or 2012.
All the cases involved adultery, said Jasri after the commissioning of 16 Shariah lawyers at Wisma Muis here this morning.
On Wednesday, the Kelantan state assembly passed an amendment to the Shariah Criminal Procedure Enactment 2002, which calls for Shariah offenders to be caned in public for the offences of zina (adultery), false accusations of zina, sodomy and alcohol consumption.
Footage of two offenders, a man and a woman, being caned at the Tawau Shariah Court on Nov 18 in 2016 were released on Youtube earlier this year.
On another matter, Jasri said that the state Shariah court has solved 12,004 out of 15,073 mal cases, and 2,279 out of 3,010 criminal cases since last year.