A POLICE officer assigned to seize a handphone from a witness in preacher Ebit Irawan Ibrahim Lew or Ebit Lew’s sexual harassment case did not check the contents on the device, despite knowing the case was linked to the preacher.

Salwani Mohd Hadzir, 40 told the Tenom magistrate’s court that even though she was informed the case involved Lew, she had no idea it was pertaining to sexual harassment.

“I was only informed by the investigating officer Noor Ashikin Shamsuri that the case involved Lew,” she told lawyer Ram Singh during cross-examination at the preacher’s sexual harassment trial today. 

However, Salwani said she had typed in section 509 of the penal Code on a set of three photographs of the handphone and SIM card that she seized from Mohd Fairuz Abu on October 5, 2021 at his house in Alor Setar.

Salwani, a staff officer at the Criminal Investigation Department’s Women and Children Section in the Kedah contingent police headquarters, agreed with the lawyer that when she seized the handphone from Fairuz, she knew it contained relevant information concerning a Tenom case.

Salwani testified further that said she had read news articles on the accused via social media before she went to Fairuz’s house to seize his handphone.

During re-examination, the police officer said she did not inspect the contents of the seized phone as each case material is required to be sent to Bukit Aman’s Forensics Department for analysis.

On labelling the set of photographs of the seized handphone and SIM card with section 509 of the penal code, Salwani said she typed it out when delivering the seized items to the investigating officer at Bukit Aman.

When asked by deputy public prosecutor Nor Azizah Mohamad why section 509 was typed out, the witness said it was because the case was being probed under that section.

The prosecution today also called its third witness, preacher Firdaus Wong Wai Hung, 39, who is also founder and president of a civil society group known as Multiracial Reverted Muslims.

He told the court that the complainant in the case was among several sexual harassment victims to whom his civil society group had extended assistance.

Lew, 37, faces 11 charges, including insulting the modesty of a woman in her 40s by sending obscene words to the victim’s phone number via WhatsApp between March and June last year.

The offence, under section 509 of the penal code, carries a maximum five years’ jail or a fine, or both.

The trial continues tomorrow. – Bernama, September 29, 2022.