TENOM: A witness in the trial of a sexual harassment case involving preacher Ebit Irawan Lew or Ebit Lew told the Magistrate’s Court here that it took him seven days to analyse more than 30,000 pictures stored in a pen drive.
ASP Yip Chang Ching, 45, an analyst from the Royal Malaysia Police Forensic Laboratory’s Computer Crime Investigation Unit, said this time period included two days he needed to open the original data of the pictures in raw format obtained from a phone involved in the case.
“Following the request of the investigating officer to produce all the sexually explicit images, I conducted an analysis by going through or looking at each image,“ he said when answering a re-examination question from Deputy Public Prosecutor Nor Azizah Mohamad here on Thursday (September 11).
The trial which began at 3 pm was conducted before Magistrate Nur Asyraf Zolhani, with lawyers Kamaruddin Mohmad Chinki and Prem Elmer Ganasan online, and ended at about 5.30 pm.
Yip, who is the eighth witness in this case, said the analysis process took a long time because the raw data can only be read using special software before it can be converted to a readable format.
He also explained that the data he analysed were data extraction and a report made by the company LGMS Berhad and the analysis process he carried out would not interfere with or change any information or data involved.
Earlier when answering another question from Kamaruddin, the witness said that the images he saw on the pen drive and the images in the Digital Forensic Investigation Report looked similar.
Kamaruddin asked the witness if he received the Digital Forensic Investigation Report physically.
Yip: No, just portable document format (PDF).
Ebit Lew, 39, faces 11 charges including defaming 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 preacher was charged under Section 509 of the Penal Code which carries a maximum sentence of five years’ imprisonment or a fine or both, if convicted.
The trial continues from Oct 22 to 25. – Bernama
