The Curious Case Of Azhar Ali Continues: MITI Officer To Lodge Police Report
Azhar Ali is once again the talk of social media after screenshots of IG Stories allegedly linked to him went viral.
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You would think the whole “Nasaboy” saga has ended after the Youth and Sports Ministry announced he had been dropped from the Perdana Fellowship program, wouldn’t you?
For those who are not familiar with “Nasaboy”, his name is Muhammad Azhar Ali, a young man seemingly caught lying about his credentials.
First, in 2020, he said he won a NASA scholarship and later claimed that he was scammed after the whole nation believed and congratulated him, including then-Prime Minister Tan Sri Muhyiddin Yassin.
READ MORE: [UPDATED] 20YO M’sian NASA Scholarship Recipient Said He Could Be A Scam Victim
3 years later, he was caught lying again. This was after it was announced that he was selected for the Perdana Fellowship Program with a placement at the Ministry of International Trade and Industry (MITI).
Netizens scrutinised his list of alleged achievements and questioned the ones that looked dubious. After much public outcry, the Ministry of Youth and Sports (KBS), in charge of the program, announced that upon checking, they found that one of his certificates turned out to be not genuine. He was dropped from the program and offered counselling.
READ MORE: Netizens Tear Into “NASA Boy” Azhar Ali’s Credentials After Finding Out He’s A Perdana Fellow
READ MORE: Perdana Fellows Alumni Association Calls For Investigation Into Azhar Ali’s Credentials
READ MORE: KBS Confirms One Perdana Fellow Dropped Over Fake Cert, Is It Azhar Ali?
The Saga continues
While it looked like the story ends there, over the weekend, a Twitter account shared screenshots of several Instagram Stories postings allegedly made by Azhar using the account @azharsturtle.
Twitter user @BN4everTN5O shared the screenshots in which one of it showed an alleged Whatsapp conversation between Azhar and a MITI officer known as Suria Zainal.
It would appear that the alleged conversation seemingly sided with Azhar, where “Suria Zainal” had said the statement to drop him was made just to keep the public quiet and Azhar can “come to MITI tomorrow and carry out as usual”.
In the chat, “Suria Zainal” was seen as offering professional words of comfort to Azhar over what happened.
In another screenshot of the alleged Stories posting, it was a picture of Minister of International Trade and Industry Tengku Datuk Seri Zafrul Tengku Abdul Aziz, captioned: “Accompanying my beloved YB to the airport”.
Once the Twitter sharing went viral, netizens tore into the WhatsApp conversation, dissecting its legitimacy. Many found the font to be different and suggested that the conversation had been edited.
They pointed out that the last paragraph of “Suria Zainal’s” message had a different font and the spacing was off as well.
This is confirmed by Suria Zainal
After the issue went viral, Suria Zainal herself made a public tweet to clarify the matter.
She said the statement that “Azhar could continue his work at MITI” was fabricated and she never said it. She’s also filing a police report on it as soon as she comes back to Malaysia on 27 September. Additionally, she also said that Azhar is no longer with MITI.
Whether or not Azhar is behind @azharsturtle, that can’t be confirmed right now. Based on our checks, the account does not exist on Instagram. A search on Google also returned no results for that username.
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