Lawyer accused of forgery set free

By ADRIAN MATHIAS
A LAWYER accused of forging court documents walked free last Friday after his case was struck out by the committal court in Port Moresby for lack of evidence.
Richter Habuka, 49, of Pak Island in Manus, was alleged to have committed the offence between June 17 and July 16, 2010 at Waigani, NCD. 
He was granted bail for K1,500.
Habuka was initially charged with two counts of forgery and was alleged to have forged a National Court order and a National Court common seal.
However, Waigani committal court magistrate Cosmas Bidar said there was insufficient evidence to commit him to the National Court and ordered the case to be struck out.
He said the court order itself was clearly forged and it was a false one but there was no direct or indirect evidence that he had forged either the court order or the common seal of the National Court.
“The court order, as it is, is clearly forged but there was no evidence to substantiate as to who authored the court documents,” Bidar said.
Meanwhile, police summary of facts alleged that Habuka acted in his capacity as lawyer to dismiss the proceedings against his clients Hii Yii Luk, a Malaysian, and Walter Lunga, a landowner from Kimbe in West New Britain.
Habuka was representing the two, who were defendants in the proceedings numbers WS 560 of 2010 and OS 715 of 2010 in the National Court at Waigani, instituted by plaintiff Peter Ling, a managing director of Tzen Pacific Ltd.