KOTA KINABALU: A staggering 96,656 pages of WhatsApp chats, extracted from just one mobile phone, have been presented to the Coroner's Court on Thursday (April 16) in the probe into Zara Qairina Mahathir's death.
The pages were part of over 70 gigabytes (GB) of data obtained from 12 mobile phones that were successfully analysed, while three other devices could not be processed due to physical damage.
The court heard that the analysis also covered social media content, videos, images and deleted material obtained through digital forensic examination of the devices.
Royal Malaysia Police Computer Crime Investigation Unit digital analyst Asst Supt Mohamad Zaidi Abu Hassan said the analysis revealed a massive volume of communication data.
"For the first 12 mobile phones, the data was so large that it had to be copied onto two pendrives," he said.
"For WF5 (one of the mobile phones), 15 types of data were recovered. This included 96,656 pages of WhatsApp conversations, 197 pages of Apple Message images, 25,160 pages of Apple Photo images, 33 pages of Facebook images, 34 pages of Instagram images, 42 pages of Telegram images, 2,376 pages of TikTok images and 7,963 pages of WhatsApp images," he said, while demonstrating the extracted data content before Coroner Amir Shah Amir Hassan.
In his testimony as the 70th witness, Mohamad Zaidi also informed the court that several of the analysed mobile phones contained more than 10,000 pages of data each.
He said 15 mobile phones were received for analysis, but only 12 devices were successfully processed.
Three mobile phones, labelled WF6, WF7 and WK13, could not be analysed due to screen damage that prevented access to the data.
However, he did not rule out the possibility that data from these devices could still be retrieved through other methods, including repairing the phone screens.
When asked by deputy public prosecutor Sofia S. Sawayan whether there was any possibility that the extracted data had been altered or manipulated, Mohamad Zaidi affirmed that the data was an exact copy of the source.
He said random checks were also conducted by comparing the extracted information with the original content on the devices to ensure the authenticity and integrity of the data.
Regarding the analysis process, he explained that all devices, including mobile phones, SIM cards and memory cards, were analysed simultaneously using digital forensic software.
With nearly two decades of digital forensic experience, Mohamad Zaidi had handled over 7,000 cases and examined roughly 100,000 digital exhibits, the court heard.
The analysis, he added, was conducted using XRY equipment and adhered to ISO 17025 international standards as well as those of the US National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST).
Zara Qairina, 13, died on July 17 at Queen Elizabeth Hospital, where she had been admitted a day earlier after being found unconscious near a drain at her school hostel in Papar at 4am.
The AGC ordered her remains exhumed for a post-mortem on Aug 8, before announcing a formal inquest into her death on Aug 13.
The inquest will resume Friday (April 17) with the same witness. – Bernama
