00:00The Court of Appeal has allowed two Catholic mission organisations to introduce fresh historical evidence in their appeal
00:07over land occupied by the Sacred Heart Kenosian Convent in Banda Hilir, Melaka.
00:13A three-member bench ruled that the Kenosian Sisters and the Portuguese Mission
00:17had met the legal requirements for admitting new evidence after the High Court dismissed their judicial review.
00:23The new evidence consists of official correspondence from 1936 between the owner of the disputed land,
00:30known as Lot 6, and the then Melaka Municipality.
00:34Justice Firuz Jafril said the documents were found at the National Archives of Malaysia
00:39only after the High Court dismissed the organisation's judicial review in February 2025.
00:45The Court found that the organisations had made reasonable efforts to locate the nearly century-old records,
00:51which had been catalogued under different headings.
00:54It also ruled that the documents were credible and could influence the outcome of the ownership dispute.
01:01However, the Court rejected a separate application to admit a 1934 map of Melaka,
01:06ruling that it did not help determine who owned Lot 6.
01:10The appeal follows the High Court's finding that
01:13references to the Portuguese convent referred to the building on the land, not ownership of the land itself.
01:20The High Court had also found that the organisation failed to prove legal or beneficial ownership
01:26before the current land registration system came into force.
01:29Dunjun Yang, F&T.
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