Lawyer claims photo of girl in chess tournament incident was doctored

KUALA LUMPUR: The photo of the girl who was forced to withdraw from a chess tournament because she was said to be wearing an improper dress is doctored, claims a lawyer.

Mohd Harris Abdullah, who is representing the National Scholastic Chess Championship director Sophian A.Yusuf, said he had evidence that the length of the girl's dress was above knee level, which is against the dress code of the school where the tournament was held.

"We have a photograph of her taken during the tournament which is completely different from the photograph in the Facebook post.

He claimed that the girl's skirt was actually shorter than seen in the photograph that went viral together with the accusation that she was forced to withdraw from the tournament.

"They pulled down the skirt and then took the photograph," he said.

Mohd Harris added that the photograph, which would be used as evidence in court, was taken by official tournament photographers.

"It looks like the evidence posted on the Internet was doctored to make it look bad," he added.

When contacted on Wednesday, the girl's mother Chin Wai Ling and her chess coach Kaushal Khandhar declined to comment further on the issue.

On April 14, a 12-year old girl was apparently forced to withdraw from a chess championship for wearing a dress that was allegedly deemed improper by the organisers.

The player was told mid-game by the chief arbiter that her short-sleeved knee-length dress was "improper" and she would not be allowed to wear a similar dress for the next round.

Chin said they were only told this at around 10pm when shops were closing, so they did not have time to buy slacks for the following day's 9am tournament start time.

Kaushal, a chess player and coach who made the matter public on Facebook, had said that the girl, who is his student and a school chess champion of her district in Kuala Lumpur, felt "harassed and humiliated" by the actions of the tournament director and chief arbiter.