Housing and Local Government Minister Zuraida Kamarudin today retracted at the High Court in Kuala Lumpur any insinuation she allegedly made in a press statement last year against Malaysia Chess Federation secretary Sophian A Yusuf.

This is over reports of her criticising the tournament organisers for not allowing a 12-year-old competitor to participate in a competition due to her attire.

Following Zuraida's agreement to retract the insinuation, Judicial Commissioner Rohani Ismail recorded the settlement between both parties in the defamation suit.

"Terms of the settlement cannot be disclosed," said Sophian's lawyer Mohd Haris Abdullah after emerging from the High Court judge's chambers.

Haris said Sophian also withdrew his suit against the girl's chess coach Kaushal Khandar for making a statement on Facebook after he agreed to withdraw his statement on the social media.

Sophian, who was then assistant secretary of the federation and tournament director of the National Scholastic Chess Championship 2017, filed his suit last November following the comments made by Zuraida. 

Zuraida was represented by Latheefa Koya and Shahid Adli Kamaridin.

In his suit, Sophian claimed that Zuraida's statement was issued in mala fide (in bad faith), since it implied he was not only incompetent but also a paedophile who posed a danger to children.

Besides general, special, exemplary and aggravated damages, he was seeking for the statement to be removed from all media, a permanent injunction to prevent its dissemination, and an apology from the PKR lawmaker.

In her defence filed on Jan 18 to have the suit struck out, Zuraida raised the Reynolds defence (qualified privilege) and fair comment, and insisted that there was no malice in the statement.

She also argued that the statement cited in Sophian’s suit was not produced in full in news reports, and added that she was only expressing her opinion that the 12-year-old should not be disallowed from participating due to her choice of attire.

The issue first came to light when Kaushal took to Facebook to criticise the championship director and chief arbiter of the tournament, whom he claimed forced the girl to withdraw over her "seductive" dress.