Document expert insists journal entries written by Zara

PAPAR, Sabah - A document examiner from the chemistry department has reaffirmed her conclusion that the handwritten entries in several journals believed to belong to Zara Qairina Mahathir were indeed penned by the teenager herself. Nurul Atiqah Noh, who was called upon to testify in the inquest into the 13-year-old's mysterious death, expressed her unchanged stance despite receiving differing opinions from two other forensic document and handwriting experts, Linthini Gannetion and Tay Eue Kam.

Atiqah, who first testified in September 2025, adhered to established international standards in her document examinations. She compared the disputed handwriting with Zara's known handwriting samples and concluded that the entries on the questioned pages were indeed written by the teenager in question.

In June, Linthini had testified that certain portions of multiple documents, including a journal, were not written by Zara, suggesting that other individuals had contributed to the content. Tay, on the other hand, testified last month that several journals contained entries penned by multiple individuals.

Zara, a 13-year-oldgirl, was found unconscious in a drain near her school dormitory at around 4 a.m. on July 17, 2025. She was subsequently rushed to Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Kota Kinabalu, where she succumbed to her injuries later that day. The ongoing inquest proceedings are scheduled to resume on October 5.