The court earlier dismissed the case against Jirachai but Yingluck’s legal team subsequently filed a petition with the Court of Appeals which then issued a new order for the lower court to hear from witnesses and view evidence linked to the charges against the Prayut government’s senior official.

Jirachai, previously deputy permanent secretary of the PM’s Office, was in charge of pursuing the civil liability lawsuit against Yingluck in which the ex-premier is liable for a compensation of Bt280 billion due to the financial damage caused by her government’s rice-pledging scheme.

Noppadol Laothong, a lawyer for Yingluck, alleged Jirachai had violated Article 157 of the Criminal Code by his negligence of official duty in handling the rice-pledging case against the former premier since he did not thoroughly consider all witnesses and evidences.

The lawyer said the judges of the lower court did not hear from witnesses so the Appeals Court issued the order for the lower court to do so on April 21 to ensure justice for the former premier.

He said Yingluck was one of the three persons who would testify before the court on that date against Jirachai.

Jirachai is expected to send his representative to attend the hearing before the court makes its decision on whether to accept the case.

Noppadol said Jirachai had acted improperly in violation of the rules and regulations established by the government committee in charge of civil liability lawsuits. This resulted in the unfair treatment of Yingluck.

According to the government committee’s rules and regulations, Noppadol said Jirachai was supposed to have hearings with various witnesses to get facts regarding the rice-pledging scheme before drawing a conclusion but he had failed to do so.

In addition, he alleged Jirachai neither checked the scheme’s rice inventory nor deducted the value of milled rice to get the net position of the overall scheme so the figures on financial damage were not accurate.

Noppadol said the scheme represented one of the key policies of the Yingluck government aimed at shoring up domestic rice prices to help farmers so Yingluck could not be held directly responsible for any civil liability as alleged by the Jirachai committee.