Kota Kinabalu: A forensic document examiner told the Coroner’s Court on Wednesday that more than one person contributed to handwritten entries found in journals linked to Zara Qairina Mahathir.
Tay Eue Kam, the 79th deponent in the inquest, said her examination involved comparing handwriting in journal entries, schoolbooks and loose sheets to determine whether Zara was the writer of each entry.
She said the documents examined included a green-covered journal marked “Notes” (W1), a pastel-purple journal marked “Simple Style Book” (W2), a dark brown journal marked “Diamond” (W3), 15 loose sheets marked Y1 to Y15, and an olive-green journal marked “Love and Peace” (WK9).
According to Tay, she compared the handwriting in the documents with specimen handwriting known to have been written by Zara, as well as specimen handwriting belonging to other students from her school.
“On W1 and W2, more than one person contributed to the handwritten entries, but there was ‘strong support’ that most of the entries in both journals were written by the same person.
“There was also ‘strong support’ that most of the handwriting in W1 was written by Zara, except for two pages containing handwritten entries in pencil.
“For W2, there was ‘strong support’ that most of the handwriting was written by Zara, except for pages 58, 59, 61, 76, 87, 88, 98 and 100,” she said when reading out her witness statement before Coroner Amir Shah Amir Hassan.
She also found “strong support” that the recovered indented writing on pages 51 and 53, marked as 51-i and 53-i, was not written by Zara.
As for W3, Tay said more than two people contributed to the handwriting in the journal.
She grouped the pages by writer, including those identified as “Declared Writer 1” and “Declared Writer 2”, as well as five unidentified writers referred to as “Undeclared Writer 1” to “Undeclared Writer 5”.
There was “strong support” that Zara did not write the entries attributed to Declared Writer 1, Declared Writer 2, Undeclared Writer 1 and Undeclared Writer 2.
However, there was “strong support” that Zara wrote the entries attributed to Undeclared Writer 3, Undeclared Writer 4 and Undeclared Writer 5.
Tay also found that more than two individuals contributed to the handwriting in WK9.
She was unable to reach a conclusion on the authorship of entries on pages 4 to 7, 11 and 50, which contained scribbles and multiple overlapping entries.
However, there was “strong support” that Zara wrote the entries on pages 45, 46, 51 and 52, as well as entries on a torn page of unknown source marked 47(a) and 47(b).
“There was also ‘strong support’ that the indented writing recovered from page 37 was written by Zara.
“In contrast, the indented writing recovered from page 50 identified ‘Wina’ as the declared writer. Differences were observed between the handwriting in that entry andZara’s specimen writing, with ‘strong support’ that Zara did not write the entry.”On the 15 loose sheets marked Y1 to Y15, Tay said more than two individuals contributed to the handwriting.
“There was ‘strong support’ that Zara wrote the entries on Y1a; Y6a, Y6b, Y7a, Y7b and Y8a; as well as Y11a to Y15b.
“There was also ‘strong support’ that Zara did not write the entries on Y1b to Y5b, as well as Y9b, Y10a and Y10b.
“For Y9a, there was ‘strong support’ that the entry was written by more than one individual,” she said.
Tay, however, highlighted several limitations in the handwriting examination.
She said there was a gap in the specimen handwriting taken from Zara’s school workbooks between the end of 2024 and the beginning of 2025.
Tay also noted that Zara and the other students were under 16 at the relevant time and their handwriting might not have been fully developed and could retain “copybook” characteristics, or standard letter forms taught in school.
She further testified that students taught similar writing styles could therefore exhibit common handwriting features, making it more difficult to distinguish between individual writers compared with fully developed adult handwriting.
Tay said her findings were based solely on the documents made available to her, adding that she reserved the right to re-evaluate her opinions if presented with new or previously unavailable evidence.
The inquest resumes on Thursday.
