TENOM, Aug 16 — A Royal Malaysia Police (PDRM) senior audio-video analyst told the Magistrates’ Court here that the software she used could not identify data deleted from the mobile phone of the female complainant in the case of preacher Ebit Irawan Ibrahim Lew or better known as Ebit Lew.

Latifah Abdul Aziz, 43, said she had used the XRY software to extract data from the mobile phone.

The seventh prosecution witness agreed with the suggestion of lawyer Ram Singh, who is representing Ebit Lew, that the text messages could have been deleted.

Latifah also told the court that she had done a data analysis of the mobile phones seized from the first witness, Mohd Fairuz Abu and the third witness Firdaus Wong Wai Hung.

"Findings from the analysis revealed that there was a Whatsapp group, named ‘Nobody’, which had four participants, namely Mohd Fairuz, Firdaus and two other individuals,” she testified before Magistrate Nur Asyraf Zolhani during Ebit Lew’s trial today.

Latifah, however, told the court that no analysis was done on the mobile phones of the other two individuals.

Ebit Lew, 37, 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 provides for a prison sentence of up to five years or a fine or both, upon conviction.

The trial continues tomorrow. — Bernama