KOTA KINABALU, Sept 17 — The Coroner’s Court was told today that three diaries, several exercise books, and 15 pages of handwritten diary entries belonging to the late Zara Qairina Mahathir were found in stages before being handed over to the police.
Azhari Abd Sagap, 31, the head warden of SMK Agama Tun Datu Mustapha in Papar, testified that the first discovery was made on July 16 at 11.15am, when a ‘Teacher Gloria’ informed him about two diaries, one green and one purple, found in Zara's locker.
“At the time, I was at the Queen Elizabeth Hospital I. I instructed that the two diaries be handed to ‘Teacher Yuslina’ for temporary safekeeping,” said the eighth witness in the inquest into the 13-year-old girl’s death.
The next discovery took place the following day, on July 17, at 3.30pm, when Zara's mother informed him that she wanted to collect her daughter’s belongings from the hostel.
Azhari then asked another teacher, ‘Miswati’, to help pack Zara’s belongings from her locker and place them in the isolation room on the ground floor of the hostel building.
“Miswati later informed me that she had found a brown diary and an exercise book in Zara Qairina’s locker. I instructed her to hand them over to Yuslina,” he said.
Azhari added that at 8.30am on July 18, Yuslina handed over the three diaries and the exercise book to him, and he subsequently passed all four items to investigating officer Insp Wong Yew Zhung at approximately 5pm the same day.
“On July 19, Miswati also found 15 pages of handwritten diary entries in Zara Qairina’s classroom bookshelf during inspection at around 8 am. These were first passed to Yuslina, who then gave them to me,” he said.
Azhari said he handed the 15 diary pages to Inspector Wong that same day at 3pm.
When questioned by Deputy Public Prosecutor Mohd Fairuz Johari, who is serving as the inquest’s conducting officer, he confirmed that he also submitted two other exercise books belonging to Zara Qairina — for Bahasa Melayu and Science — to the police upon request.
Zara died on July 17 at the Queen Elizabeth Hospital I in Kota Kinabalu and was buried at the Tanjung Ubi Muslim cemetery in Sipitang the same day. She was admitted to the hospital a day earlier after being found unconscious near a drain at her school hostel in Papar at 4am.
On August 8, the Attorney General’s Chambers ordered her remains to be exhumed for a post-mortem, before announcing an inquest into her death on August 13.
