Chemical analysis links 15 loose pages to Zara Qairina's 'Love and Peace' journal

KOTA KINABALU - Chemical analysis has established a strong scientific link between 15 loose pages marked Y1 to Y15 and the ‘Love and Peace’ journal marked WK9 examined in connection with the death of Zara Qairina Mahathir, the Coroner’s Court heard today.

The 78th witness, forensic science lecturer and researcher from Universiti Sains Malaysia (USM) Dr Dzulkiflee Ismail said analysis showed that the loose pages and WK9 shared the same chemical composition, while they could be chemically distinguished from a brand-new unused journal of the same brand and type.

"Taken together, my results support the conclusion that the paper of pages Y1 to Y15 shares the same chemical composition as the paper of journal WK9 and is chemically distinguishable from an unused journal of the same brand and type.

"In other words, there is strong scientific support for the conclusion that the loose pages Y1 to Y15 originally came from journal WK9,” he told Coroner Amir Shah Amir Hassan during the inquest into Zara Qairina's death here today.

Dzulkiflee, who holds a PhD in Forensic Chemistry from the University of Strathclyde, United Kingdom, said he carried out the chemical analysis using Attenuated Total Reflectance-Fourier Transform Infrared (ATR-FTIR) spectroscopy together with chemometric techniques.

He said the technique enabled the chemical composition of the papers to be compared through distinctive infrared ‘fingerprint’ patterns, which could help determine whether papers came from the same or different sources.

He added that the Principal Component Analysis (PCA) showed Y1 to Y15 formed a tight cluster, indicating that the pages were chemically very similar to one another, with readings from WK9 falling within the same cluster.

He said further analysis using Linear Discriminant Analysis (LDA) correctly classified 100 per cent of the samples into their respective groups, while statistical cross-validation recorded an accuracy of 98.5 per cent, with WK9 consistently grouped together with Y1 to Y15 instead of the unused control journal.

However, he stressed that his examination was limited to establishing the likely common origin of the papers based on their chemical composition and did not involve determining who wrote the entries.

Zara Qairina died at Queen Elizabeth Hospital on July 17, 2025, a day after she was found unconscious in a drain near her school hostel at about 4 am.

The inquest will resume on Wednesday. - BERNAMA