THE Magistrate’s Court in Tenom today was told that the modified date of the screenshot obtained from the mobile phone of the female complainant in the case of preacher Ebit Irawan Ibrahim Lew or Ebit Lew was the same as the date the police report was filed, on August 7, 2021.

Senior police audio-video analyst Latifah Abdul Aziz said this during cross-examination by lawyers at the trial before Magistrate Nur Asyraf Zolhani.

Latifah, 43, agreed with the suggestion of lawyer Ram Singh, who represented Ebit Lew, that the analysis report showed that the screenshot was present on the mobile phone on the modified date (August 7, 2021).

She said that out of the 436 screenshots, there were also some images that did not have sexual elements and were inadvertently selected when they were extracted from the mobile phone she was analysing.

However, the seventh prosecution witness said she had handed over the screenshots to the investigating officer to determine whether the photos were relevant to the investigation.

Latifah also agreed with the lawyer’s suggestion that the mobile phone screenshots could possibly have been tampered with.

Lew, 38, faces 11 charges, including insulting the modesty of a woman in her 40s by sending obscene words and pictures to the victim’s phone number via the WhatsApp application between March and June 2021.

The charge under Section 509 of the Penal Code carries a maximum sentence of five years imprisonment, or a fine, or both, if convicted.

The magistrate then set the trial to continue from September 26 to 29. – Bernama, August 18, 2023