They were given 14 days to leave, and monetary compensation was offered for their destroyed homes, fruit trees and crops but not for their ancestral land.
In April 2002, the Malaysian High Court ruled against the Selangor State, and recognised the Temuan plaintiffs as the customary owners of the land according to common law.
Furthermore, under Section 6 of the Act, the State is vested with powers to change the status of these formerly gazetted areas, thereby removing any long-standing legal protection.
According to the Asian Indigenous and Tribal Peoples Network, the hasty eviction was carried out without due process of negotiation and evaluation, so as to complete the Nilai–KLIA Highway in time for Kuala Lumpur's 1998 Commonwealth Games.
[8] In 1996, with a team of pro-bono lawyers from the Bar Council (led by Datuk Dr Cyrus Das and assisted by Jerald Gomez, Rashid Ismail, Sharmila Sekaran and Leena Ghosh), the Temuan plaintiffs fought the case in the Shah Alam High Court[8] under Judge Mohamad Noor Ahmad J.
One of the witnesses for the Temuans' case was Dr Colin Nicholas, coordinator of the Center for Orang Asli Concerns Archived 2021-06-13 at the Wayback Machine (COAC) in Malaysia.
He provided visual, oral history and archival evidence that the Temuans had been living at Kampong Bukit Tampoi, Selangor for at least seven generations.
[9] To further display the existence of a distinctive Temuan culture associated with the land (adat tanah), court evidence included details about the Temuans' customary burial (adat kebumian), their religion or belief system about the ancestor-protector-spirits (the Moyangs), their community weapon (the blowpipe, or sumpitan), their tradition of sekor-menakor, their personal and place-names, their custom on inheritance, their traditional activities and their aboriginal language.
The Temuan traditions of ownership were also explained to the court, for example the clearly defined family lots within the communal territory which were demarcated by geographical markers (such as the pinang palm, other fruit trees, or rivers).
The forced acquisition of the land at Kampong Bukit Tampoi, Selangor, in 1995 took place under the Barisan Nasional-led State government, which was then sued by the Temuan plaintiffs.
However, before the appeal could be heard at the Federal Court of Malaysia, the informal political coalition Pakatan Rakyat came to power in Selangor during the Malaysian general election, 2008.
[10] Furthermore, the Selangor State Government's withdrawal of appeal (under Pakatan Rakyat) on the Sagong Tasi case in April 2009 signalled an increased recognition of Orang Asli land rights.