Justice GSP Bhupindar Singh ordered the Perak land authorities to demarcate and gazette the land as native customary land.
He also issued a permanent injunction against Perak Hydro Renewable Energy Corporation Sdn Bhd and Conso Hydro Sdn Bhd, as well as their agents, from encroaching on the land.
Bhupindar also ordered the two defendants to vacate the land within 30 days but suspended the order pending the filing of a formal stay application.
The court also found that the Perak government, Orang Asli development department, Perak lands and mines director and the federal government had breached their constitutional, statutory and fiduciary duties to the plaintiffs in allowing their land to be encroached upon by the companies.
Bhupindar ordered the two companies to pay damages of RM20,000 to the plaintiffs, as well as costs of RM75,000 to be paid by all the defendants to the plaintiffs.
Lawyers Vinu Kamalananthan, Conrad Lopez and Sarah Tiong appeared for the Orang Asli, while Goik Kenzin, Ramesh Sivakumar and Calvin Lim represented the companies.
Senior federal counsel Siti Norashikin Hassanor and state assistant legal adviser Ainul Wardah Shahidan acted for the remaining defendants.
In 2018, a group of 22 Orang Asli settlers filed a suit against the six defendants and demanded that work on the dam be stopped as it infringed on the community’s right to their ancestral land, which they claimed had been cleared without their consent.
The settlers, from the Semai tribe, come from six villages in the Ulu Geruntum area, namely Kampung Sungai Kapor, Kampung Sat, Kampung Ulu Kepayang, Kampung Empang Main, Kampung Poh and Kampung Ulu Geruntum.
The two companies started the project in Sungai Geruntum in 2012.
The Orang Asli said the project had destroyed fruit tree plantations and about 50 ancestral burial grounds without permission from the Semai people in Ulu Geruntum.
They said the water source there had also been contaminated.
The plaintiffs added that the state and federal agencies had a fiduciary duty to protect their rights under the Federal Constitution and the Aboriginal Peoples Act 1954.