“SHE'S a woman”. Clerk Connie Chee, an aunt of cosmetics entrepreneur Sri Wani Choo Abdullah, said her niece is a woman “and will forever be a woman”.

Sri Wani, 37, is embroiled in a bitter divorce after her husband, former Universiti Sains Islam Malaysia dean Dr Bahrom Sanugi, accused her of being a man.

The 61-year-old academician has filed an application in the Syariah High Court to compel her to take a DNA test to verify her gender.

“My siblings and I grew up with her and I even bathed her as a child,” Chee, 45, told Sinar Harian, disclosing that Sri Wani was given to her parents at birth and her niece grew up as a girl.

“Since she was a child, she had never kept any secret from me. Just stop this slander. Pity her,” Chee pleaded, adding that Sri Wani's gender is stated as female in both her identity card and Muslim conversion certificate.

Chee said Sri Wani enjoyed the company of Malay friends when she was young and it did not surprise the family when she told them that she was converting to Islam.

Chee said she could not understand why Sri Wani's husband, who took her as his third wife in August 2009, was now raising doubts about her gender.

On another matter, Chee said the family would take legal action against a newspaper that carried pictures of Sri Wani's home and her business premises without consent.

“It is humiliating to the family's dignity and Sri Wani's safety is now at stake,” she said.

>THERE are no takers for the RM100,000 reward offered by a sister of businessman Datuk Khalid Mohd Jiwa to anyone with evidence that he had married Rozita Che Wan.

Datin Zaiton Mohd Jiwa said when rumours surfaced that Datuk K (his popular name) had taken the actress as his second wife, the family was frequently asked if the rumours were true.

“I told them they were not,” she told Utusan Malaysia, adding that the slander statements were aimed at causing a strain in her brother's marriage to pop princess Datuk Siti Nurhaliza.

Zaiton said the reward “still stands”

“However, I will not hesitate to take legal action against anyone coming with false evidence.”

Other News & Views is compiled from the vernacular newspapers (Bahasa Malaysia, Chinese and Tamil dailies). As such, stories are grouped according to the respective language/medium. Where a paragraph begins with this > sign, it denotes a separate news item.

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