PKR information chief Tian Chua today turned the tables on an investigating officer when the latter could not produce a doctored photograph that was the subject of investigations.

Chua said the policeman had instead produced a picture downloaded from a website which he had no connections to and thus could not answer most of the questions posed.

Policeman ASP Shahrizal Mat Deris from the Sentul district police headquarters took statements from Chua during an hour long session this morning at the PKR headquarters in Brickfields, Kuala Lumpur.

Chua is being investigated based on a police report by the Malaysian Indian Muslim Congress (Kimma) on a doctored photograph portraying Deputy Premier Najib Abdul Razak dining with political analyst Abdul Razak Baginda and slain Mongolian woman Altantuya Shaariibuu.

Speaking to reporters later, Chua said Shahrizal had with him a black-and-white copy of the picture in question.

"After much persuasion, he said the picture he had was downloaded from umno-reform.com , but I had nothing to do with them and could not answer his questions.

"His next question was whether I'm familiar with umno-reform.com, which I replied 'no, you must put on record that this picture was taken from that website'," said Chua.

He said that Shahrizal only agreed to put that on record after a 10-minute argument between the two.

'Clueless investigation'

Chua claimed Shahrizal never posed any questions relating to PKR nor Chua's personal website, where the controversial doctored photo was first posted.

He described the whole experience as a "clueless investigation" as the policeman was unprepared and had admitted ignorance on matters pertaining to the Internet.

Chua also announced that on Monday, he would be giving statements to the Malaysian Communication and Multimedia Commission (MCMC) on the same matter.

This is in relations to a report lodged by Umno Youth deputy chief Khairy Jamaluddin. Khairy had claimed previously that the youth movement was 'hurt' by Chua's doctored picture.

Suaram executive director Yap Swee Seng, who accompanied Chua today, told reporters that the investigations against the latter were part of a larger concerted attempts to silence online dissidents.

"The picture in question is still in his blog. Chua did not deny authoring it. There is nothing more for the police to do than to charge him if they really want to. There is no more investigating necessary," said Yap.