Ebit Lew case: Witness did not give police mobile phone used to record video call

TENOM: A woman testified in the Magistrate's Court on Thursday (Aug 29) that she did not give the police the mobile phone she used to record a video call with Ebit Irawan Ibrahim Lew, also known as Ebit Lew (pic).

The ninth prosecution witness, in her 40s, who is the complainant in the sexual harassment case against the preacher, explained that the phone in question was used at home with her husband, and she could not recall the number because it was no longer active.

During cross-examination by Lew's lawyer, Datuk Ram Singh, before Magistrate Nur Asyraf Zolhani, the witness said she received a video call from Lew on the evening of July 10, 2021, on another mobile phone she owned.

She then used the home phone to record the call.

Ram Singh: "Just now you testified that you were using two phones during the video call, correct?"

Witness: "Yes, but it wasn’t my phone," she said, referring to the phone used to record the video call as the household phone.

The woman testified that the video call was the first she had ever recorded, and she did so without the accused's knowledge, before blocking Lew's phone number on July 11, 2021.

However, she informed the court that the phone used for the video call was handed over to the police on Aug 7, 2021, as it contained the recorded video.

Lew, 38, faces 11 charges, including outraging the modesty of a woman in her 40s by sending obscenities to her phone via WhatsApp between March and June 2021.

The preacher is charged under Section 509 of the Penal Code, which carries a maximum sentence of five years in prison, a fine, or both upon conviction.

The trial resumes on Friday (Aug 30). - Bernama