KUALA LUMPUR – The Home Ministry says it will hold off on any action regarding the conditional pardon granted to former prime minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak until it receives formal written notification of the Pardons Board's decision.

Home Minister Datuk Seri Saifuddin Nasution Ismail confirmed that neither his ministry nor the Prisons Department had yet been officially informed of the ruling.

"We are still waiting for the official notification. It is normally sent out by the Legal Affairs Division of the Prime Minister's Department, which serves as secretariat to the Pardons Board," he told reporters in Kulim, Kedah, on the previous day.

According to Saifuddin Nasution, the written notice will spell out what steps the ministry and the Prisons Department must take under the current laws.

Responding to reports that Najib may serve his sentence under house arrest, the minister said the ministry would need to study the official document closely to understand the exact terms and conditions involved.

"We need to check whether the Pardons Board's decision names a specific location or leaves that to the Prisons Department to decide. That's why I want to review the letter first," he said.

He explained that house arrest allows a person to serve a sentence at a designated place rather than in prison, but stressed that how it would be carried out depends entirely on the wording of the board's written decision.

The ministry, he added, would also need to establish whether the Pardons Board had simply issued a decision or had additionally authorised the Prisons Department to put it into effect.

"We want to know whether other options were weighed, debated and eventually decided upon. All of that will be communicated to us in writing," he said.

No Existing Law on House Arrest

Asked whether Malaysia currently has legislation covering house arrest, Saifuddin Nasution said no such law exists at this time.

He noted that the government had earlier looked into introducing a House Arrest Act, chiefly as a way to ease overcrowding caused by remand prisoners.

"I had already secured Cabinet's in-principle agreement to start the process of tabling a House Arrest Bill in Parliament to tackle prison overcrowding," he said.

The minister explained that inmates generally fall into two groups: those convicted and serving their sentences, and remand prisoners still awaiting the conclusion of their court cases.

Some remand detainees, he said, are denied bail because of the seriousness of their charges, while others stay behind bars simply because they cannot meet bail conditions. Together, these groups have pushed the prison system beyond capacity.

"We currently have 41 prisons, but the inmate population stands at roughly 93,000 against a capacity of 75,000. You can see just how severe the overcrowding is," he said.

If passed by Parliament, the proposed law would let certain remand prisoners remain at home while being tracked through modern electronic monitoring devices until their trial dates.