PLEASE INVESTIGATE: (From right) Tam, Tei, and Zhi Liang outside the police station after lodging the police report.
KUCHING: A local woman wants the police to investigate “defamatory rumours” implicating her in an alleged affair with a politician, which had been circulating via SMS and Facebook over the past week.
Irene Tam, a 51-year-old trader, said the rumours of her alleged involvement with the politician, and the subsequent “hush money” received by her husband to cover up the matter, had tarnished the couple’s reputation.
Accompanied by her husband Tei Sung Po and son Zhi Liang, she said the rumours began spreading via SMS and also Facebook on April 12, and that she herself received the text message the following day.
“My family, relatives and friends all know that the allegations are false and defamatory to my husband and I,” said Tam, adding she wanted the police to investigate the source of the rumours.
The SMS claimed she was involved in an affair with a local politician, who had contested but lost in the recently-concluded state election, and that her husband had found out about the affair but was paid a large sum of money to ‘settle’ the matter.
In her statement, Tam said she “categorically denied” any involvement with the said politician, and that the rumours were “very damaging” against her personal and also family’s reputation.