Shashi Devan was appointed to the Board of Directors in Suara Rakyat Malaysia (SUARAM), after 13 years of legal work in human rights cases. With his sense of responsibility to defend his clients’ right to fair trial and commitment to justice, Shashi Devan successfully obtained a stay of deportation for Egyptian human rights defender and asylum seeker Ahmed Hassanine, which temporarily secured Ahmed’s rights as an asylum seeker.

Shashi Devan has done an excellent job in legal work. He led the digitalisation of 2 years’ worth of physical files into a cloud system and created a procedure to open and maintain client files. This initiative reduced annual costs by 5%, specifically savings on print materials (toner, paper, physical files and manpower, external storage space), while also lowering disbursement costs for clients.

LexisNexis invited Shashi Devan as a contributing editor to their Annotated Statutes of Malaysia – Penal Code. The role entailed reviewing, editing, and updating the annotations to include explanatory judicial reasoning and recent case laws. He also co-led the Anti-Torture Bill initiative with another, in collaboration with human rights NGO SUARAM. This Bill addresses legislative inadequacies in criminalizing torture by public officials, in line with the UN Convention Against Torture. These experiences have enabled him to be adept at coordinating different viewpoints, especially between civil society advocates and legal experts, while ensuring compliance with international human rights standards.

“He is always pushing boundaries to seek justice despite the limitations of the laws”. Shashi Devan offered pro-bono representation for rights activists, including police investigations of PSM members for memorandum submission to the Agriculture & Food Security Ministry, and Wong Yan Ke’s charge under Section 504 Penal Code for staging a protest during convocation and charge under Section 188 Penal Code for recording video during a police raid.

In addition, Shashi Devan actively expands his footprint in the legal industry, such as providing training under the National Legal Aid Foundation on criminal law practice and procedures, acting as a Judge in KL Bar & LIAAM Moot Court Competition 2023 Preliminary Round 1, and being a speaker, topic titled Handling Challenging Witnesses organised by the KLBC Criminal Law Practice Committee.

Shashi Devan has completed Master’s of Criminal Justice at University Malaya in 2023, with a thesis on administrative detention of children in Malaysia. Currently, he is pursuing HSK Mandarin certification for the purpose of communicating effectively with Mandarin-speaking clients.