6th August 2026, freemalaysiatoday.com, PUTRAJAYA — The Court of Appeal has allowed two Catholic mission organisations to introduce fresh historical evidence in their appeal over the ownership of land occupied by the Sacred Heart Canossian Convent in Banda Hilir, Melaka.
A three-member bench chaired by Justice Firuz Jaffril ruled that the appellants had met the legal threshold for admitting new evidence after trial, finding they had exercised reasonable diligence in searching for documents related to the disputed land known as Lot 6.
Justices Ismail Brahim and Dean Wayne Daly were also on the panel that heard the application last month.
Delivering the court’s broad grounds of judgment, Firuz said the newly admitted evidence comprised official correspondence exchanged in 1936 between the owner of Lot 6 and the then Melaka municipality, preserved at the National Archives of Malaysia.
He said the documents were only discovered after the High Court dismissed the appellants’ judicial review in February 2025.
Firuz said the Canossian Sisters and the Portuguese Mission could not be faulted for failing to locate archival records dating back nearly a century, as the documents were catalogued under different headings.
“As members of a religious order with no expertise in archival research, they exercised reasonable diligence in attempting to trace the documents,” he said.
Applying the principles established in Ladd v Marshall and the Federal Court decision in Lau Foo Sun v Government of Malaysia, the court held that the archival records were credible and could have an important influence on the determination of the ownership dispute, although they did not need to be decisive.
However, the court rejected an application to admit a 1934 Municipal Area Map of Melaka produced by the British War Office and kept at the National Archives of Singapore and the National Library of Singapore.
Firuz said the map did not assist in determining ownership of Lot 6 and therefore failed to meet the requirements for admitting fresh evidence.
The appeal arose from a February 2025 High Court decision dismissing the organisations’ judicial review after finding that they had failed to prove ownership of Lot 6.
In his judgment, Justice Radzi Abdul Hamid held that references to the “Portuguese Convent” referred to the building on the land rather than ownership of the land itself.
He also found that the organisations failed to establish any legal or beneficial ownership before the current land registration system came into force.
Lawyers Joy Wilson Appukuttan, Benjamin John Dawson and Kelvynn Foo appeared for the appellants, while Melaka state legal adviser Khairul Azreem Mamat and Anis Wahidah Mohamad appeared for the state government.
