KOTA KINABALU, May 18 — The Coroner’s Court here today heard a glimpse of a daughter’s love and distress, as six of 42 audio recordings between the late Zara Qairina Mahathir and her mother, Noraidah Lamat, were played in court. Each recording lasted up to four minutes.
Among the moments played were Zara Qairina expressing her love and longing for her mother, as well as her frustration over losing money.
“Bye, sayang, cinta, rindumu. Muah. I love you,” Zara Qairina was heard saying, to which Noraidah tenderly replied, “I love you, Ra. Bye, Ra.”
Noraidah’s lawyer, Shahlan Jufri, explained that only a handful of recordings were selected for the court hearing, as playing all 42 would take nearly two hours.
Shahlan then directed a question to the 70th witness, assistant supt Mohamad Zaidi Abu Hassan, 44, a forensic analyst from the Royal Malaysia Police Computer Crime Investigation Unit.
He asked whether the conversation recordings had ever been extracted during the analysis of a piece of evidence marked as WK11.
Mohamad Zaidi said he only extracted recordings of conversations from WhatsApp, and the ones played in court could not be retrieved using the analysis software he employed.
“I only extracted these conversation recordings from WhatsApp. They could not be extracted through my analysis software,” he said before Coroner Amir Shah Amir Hassan.
The witness said he “did not find” the conversation recordings between Zara Qairina and her mother in the results of his analysis because it was limited to audio from WhatsApp and other social media platforms.
He confirmed that the audio recordings played in court were authentic.
However, he added that if a re-analysis were to be conducted, the process would take approximately three to four hours, in addition to going through the required report preparation procedures.
Zara Qairina, 13, died on July 17 at Queen Elizabeth Hospital, where she had been admitted a day earlier after being found unconscious near a drain at her school hostel in Papar at 4am.
The Attorney General’s Chambers ordered her remains exhumed for a post-mortem on August 8, before announcing a formal inquest into her death on August 13.
The inquest proceedings resume tomorrow. — Bernama
Date: 18 May, 2026 8:15 pm
Source: Malay Mail
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