SINGAPORE - Iris Koh, founder of anti-vaccine group Healing the Divide, has lost her bid to challenge the Attorney-General’s move to stop her from appealing in a case where she lodged a complaint against four police officers.

The complaint relates to the officers’ handling of electronic devices that were seized from Koh during her arrest.

The 47-year-old was arrested in January 2022 for allegedly conspiring to cheat and submit falsified vaccination records to the Ministry of Health. As part of investigations, her laptop, mobile phone and e-mail disk were seized.

On Nov 18, 2022, she lodged a magistrate’s complaint against four members of the police forensic team, alleging that they had breached protocol. A magistrate’s complaint is an application for a magistrate to examine an alleged criminal offence and give directions for further action. 

Koh complained that the devices had been put in envelopes instead of being sealed in tamper-proof bags. She said she was worried that fraudulent evidence could be planted in her devices.

She alleged that this resulted in the “chain of custody of evidence” being compromised, thus making the evidence inadmissible in court. 

She also alleged that the four officers had committed criminal offences, namely, purportedly giving false information to a public servant and failing to assist a public servant.

This was in relation to a meeting on Nov 4, 2022, when Koh asked a prosecutor if the extracted duplicates of her devices were ready. The prosecutor said they were not, but added that this may be done by Nov 7. 

Koh accused the four officers, who were at the meeting, of remaining silent and trying to mislead her with their reticence.

A senior magistrate formally questioned Koh on Nov 23, 2022, and dismissed her complaint. He found no credible evidence that the police officers had committed the alleged offences.

On Dec 6, 2022, Koh filed an appeal against the magistrate’s decision.

On Feb 9, 2023, the Attorney-General wrote to the court, saying that Koh’s appeal was legally unsustainable. This was because a complainant did not have a right of appeal against the dismissal of a magistrate’s complaint.

In a second letter on Feb 16, the Attorney-General invited Koh to withdraw her appeal, failing which he would apply to discontinue the appeal.

She did not respond to the letters, and the Attorney-General informed the Supreme Court registry on March 13 that he would intervene to discontinue the appeal.

On April 14, Koh applied to the High Court for permission to proceed with a judicial review, to quash the Attorney-General’s decision to intervene.

Her application was dismissed on June 30, and on Thursday, Justice See Kee Oon issued written grounds for his decision.

The judge said the Attorney-General’s decision was reasonable because Koh had no right under the law to appeal against the dismissal of her complaint to begin with. Moreover, it was abundantly clear that the facts presented by Koh did not disclose the alleged offences.

Justice See added that the appeal was not the proper forum for Koh to raise claims of alleged police impropriety.

“It appeared that the real purpose of her magistrate’s complaint was to challenge the admissibility of the material on the electronic devices,” said the judge.

He said the issue of admissibility should be raised at Koh’s trial instead.

“The appeal did not appear to have been pursued in good faith, but to advance a collateral purpose,” said the judge. He ordered Koh to pay $5,000 to the Attorney-General in legal costs.

He turned down the Attorney-General’s request for Koh’s lawyer to personally bear the costs, saying that he did not think her application was clearly frivolous and vexatious.