KOTA KINABALU, Aug 26 — Several journals examined in connection with the death of Zara Qairina Mahathir contained handwritten entries by multiple individuals, the Coroner’s Court heard today.
The 79th witness, forensic document examiner Tay Eue Kam, told Coroner Judge Amir Shah Amir Hassan that entries in the green journal marked W1 and the pastel-purple “Simple Style Book” journal marked W2 were written by more than one person.
For W1, Tay said most of the handwriting was attributed to Zara Qairina, except for two pages containing handwritten entries in pencil.
In W2, most of the handwriting was also attributed to Zara Qairina, except for entries on pages 58, 59, 61, 76, 87, 88, 98 and 100.
She said indented writings recovered from pages 51 and 53 of W2 were also found not to have been written by Zara Qairina.
Meanwhile, Tay said the dark brown journal marked W3 contained writings from more than two people, with some entries attributed to Zara Qairina and others to different individuals.
She said there was strong support that Zara Qairina did not write several groups of entries in the journal, while other groups were found to have been written by her.
The olive-green “Love and Peace” journal marked WK9 was also found to contain writings by more than two individuals.
Tay said some entries in the journal were attributed to Zara Qairina, while the authorship of several others could not be determined.
She said her examination of 15 loose sheets marked Y1 to Y15 also found writings by more than two individuals.
She added there was strong support that Zara Qairina did not write entries on Y1b to Y5b, Y9b, Y10a and Y10b, while the entry on Y9a was found to have been written by more than one individual.
Tay said her examination involved comparing handwriting in the journals, schoolbooks and loose sheets with known samples of Zara Qairina’s handwriting as well as handwriting samples from other students at her school.
She said the examination had several limitations, including a gap in the available samples of Zara Qairina’s handwriting between the end of 2024 and the beginning of 2025.
Tay said Zara Qairina and the other students were also under 16 at the relevant time, and their handwriting might not have been fully developed, making it more difficult to distinguish between individual writers.
Zara Qairina died at Queen Elizabeth Hospital on July 17, 2025, a day after she was found unconscious in a drain near her school hostel at about 4 am.
The inquest resumes tomorrow with the same witness. — Bernama
Date: 26 August, 2026 8:20 pm
Source: Malay Mail
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