Custody battle ends: Loh Siew Hong's ex-husband dies amid ongoing legal saga
GEORGE TOWN: M. Nagahswaran, who had been embroiled in a custody battle with his ex-wife Loh Siew Hong since 2020, has died.
The matter was confirmed by Loh's solicitor, Dr Shamsher Singh Thind.
According to Dr Shamsher, Nagahswaran died yesterday and a post-mortem examination to determine the cause of death is scheduled for today.
Nagahswaran had a pending criminal case at the Sessions Court in Sungai Petani for allegedly causing grievous bodily harm to Loh using a hammer in 2019.
"With his passing, the criminal proceedings against him will be discontinued," Shamsher said.
When contacted, Loh, 38, said briefly that she and their three children were on their way to pay their final respects.
The children — 16-year-old twin girls and a 13-year-old son — have been in Loh's custody since Shamsher successfully obtained a habeas corpus order in 2022.
The custody dispute began after Nagahswaran, who had converted to Islam, took the children to Perlis and unilaterally converted them without Loh's knowledge or consent.
Loh later applied for a certiorari order to nullify the conversion declaration dated July 7, 2020, issued by the Perlis Registrar of Converts in her children's names.
"The loss of a father is a sorrow that never fades, but his love leaves a memory no one can steal," she told the New Straits Times.
On March 25, 2022, she filed a legal application naming the Perlis State Registrar of Converts, the Perlis Islamic Religious and Malay Customs Council (MAIPs), Perlis Mufti Datuk Dr Mohd Asri Zainul Abidin, and the Perlis state government as respondents.
She later appealed the High Court's decision of May 11, 2023, which had dismissed her judicial review application challenging the unilateral conversion of her children.
In January last year, the Court of Appeal ruled in Loh's favour, overturning the High Court's decision, which had found no evidence the children had stopped practising Islam while in her care.
Then, in May, the Federal Court upheld that decision, affirming that the children — who were unilaterally converted by their father — would remain non-Muslim.
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