Ex-judge Arifin Jaka dies

(The Malaysian Insider) – Former Court of Appeal judge Tan Sri Arifin Jaka died earlier this morning at the Serdang Hospital here, English daily The Star reported. He was 78.

The cause of his death is as yet unknown.

Arifin (picture) shot into the limelight as the trial judge in Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim’s first sodomy indictment in 1999 against the former deputy prime minister’s family driver, Azizan Abu Bakar.

Born in 1933 in Rembau, Negri Sembilan, Arifin was one of six children in a family of rice farmers.

He won a scholarship to read law in London and, upon his return in 1970, entered into the judicial and legal services. He set up his private law firm in 1976 and dabbled in politics for a while before quitting it after losing in the 1978 general election for the Terentang state seat against Umno’s Yazid Baba.

He became a judicial commissioner in 1992 and was appointed to the High Court two years later.