Kuala lumpur: The Coroner's Court here today was told that the presence of Zara Qairina Mahathir's blood on a document does not prove that the handwriting on it belonged to her.
According to BERNAMA News Agency, forensic document examiner and certified handwriting expert Dr Linthini Gannetion stated that DNA analysis is not related to determining authorship in handwriting examination. Dr Linthini emphasized that even if the blood is indeed Zara Qairina's, it does not conclusively mean the handwriting is hers.
She made these statements while being questioned by counsel Joan Goh, who represents one of the students accused of bullying Zara Qairina, during inquest proceedings before Coroner Amir Shah Amir Hassan. The issue arose when Goh suggested that document Y8A was written by Zara Qairina due to the presence of her blood on it.
Dr Linthini, the 74th witness in the inquest and a PhD holder in forensic document examination from Universiti Sains Malaysia, explained that no conclusion could be drawn about the authorship of document Y8A because of the lack of contemporaneous handwriting samples. She also pointed out that the peculiar formation of the lowercase letter 't' in the document raised the possibility of disguise or it being written by someone else.
She explained that handwriting examination requires the assessment of both similarities and differences before reaching a conclusion, and a 'no conclusion' finding is appropriate when there are significant limiting factors, such as the absence of comparable samples.
Today's proceedings included the display of several pages on screen during questioning, which were said to reflect Zara Qairina's personal feelings, including her relationship with her mother. Yesterday, Dr Linthini testified that documents Y1 to Y15 were confirmed as pages torn from the 'Love and Peace' diary, believed to belong to Zara Qairina.
Zara Qairina died at Queen Elizabeth Hospital on July 17, 2025, a day after she was found unconscious in a drain near her school dormitory at about 4 am. The Attorney General's Chambers later ordered the exhumation of her remains for a post-mortem on Aug 8, before announcing a formal inquest into her death on Aug 13.
The inquest continues tomorrow with the same witness.