TENOM: A witness testified at the Magistrate's Court here on Tuesday (Feb 13) that the texts sent by Ebit Irawan Ibrahim Liew or Ebit Lew to her were similar to those received by other victims.
The prosecution's ninth witness, who is also the case complainant, related the matter during the sexual harassment trial against the preacher today, stating that she had lodged a police report at the Bukit Aman police headquarters on Aug 7, 2021, after reading a Facebook post by the prosecution's first witness, Akhi Fairuz Al-Jengkawi about a famous preacher's sexual harassment.
She said when she reached out to Mohd Fairuz through WhatsApp by contacting the number in the Facebook post to inquire about the identity of the preacher, Mohd Fairuz chose not to reveal the individual to them but instead asked them if they were really victims of sexual harassment and to provide a text as proof.
"I snapshotted the text from Ebit Lew and passed it to (Mohd) Fairuz, but he still didn't believe that I was really a victim and asked for more texts.
"We were the ones who first said it was Ebit Lew. Then Fairuz shared with us some texts from other victims, and we saw that the sentences used and the way he wrote were the same as those from Ebit Lew," she said during her direct examination by deputy public prosecutor Nor Azizah Mohammad.
The witness also told the court she saved Ebit Lew's texts under the name "uEL" in her mobile phone's contact list but changed the name to "ustaz" Ebit Lew before lodging the police report on Aug 7, 2021.
Ebit Lew, 38, is facing 11 charges, including outraging the modesty of the complainant by sending lewd words and photos to the woman on WhatsApp from March to June 2021.
The trial was held in front of Magistrate Nur Asyraf Zolhani. If found guilty under Section 509 of the Penal Code, the accused can face a maximum of five years in jail, a fine, or both.
The trial will resume tomorrow. – Bernama
