KUALA LUMPUR, April 2 ― Speculative media reports on the pilot of the missing Malaysia Airlines (MAS) flight MH370 could harm his family’s reputation, Inspector-General of Police Tan Sri Khalid Abu Bakar said.

According to local English daily The Star, Khalid expressed regret yesterday over the continued speculation, saying that it could embarrass the family of the 53-year-old experienced pilot.

“There are too many speculations, so we have to be very careful what we read. Even his daughter has denied, yet there are media (foreign) who intentionally write things, which are not correct,” Khalid was quoted saying last night on The Star’s website.

Even as Captain Zaharie Ahmad Shah’s family await for news for the past three weeks on the fate of the MH370 flight, the aviation enthusiast who has three children has been under scrutiny and the subject of various speculative reports.

Amid police investigations, British tabloid Daily Mail has been publishing articles on Zaharie’s political affiliations and psychological health, citing purported interviews with his family members and inside information.

But on Sunday, Zaharie’s 28-year-old daughter Aishah Zaharie accused the Daily Mail of “making up” an article, which quoted her as allegedly saying that her father was “disturbed” before the MH370 flight.

On Monday, Malaysian Pilots Association vice-president Captain Abdul Manan Mansor also denied telling the Daily Mail that Zaharie was “psychologically unstable” due to marital problems, saying he never spoke to the paper and did not even know the pilot.

Zaharie’s friends have also spoken to the media over recent weeks to defend him.

Investigators turned their attention to Zaharie and his co-pilot Fariq Abdul Hamid after Malaysia said on March 15 that the MH370 flight was believed to have been diverted from its Beijing-bound route through “deliberate action”.

Malaysian authorities insisted that all the 227 passengers and 12 cabin crew members were being investigated, but also said that several international agencies had cleared all passengers on board MH370.

Khalid previously said that investigators were examining four possibilities for the plane’s disappearance ― hijack, sabotage, personal problems and psychological issues, but Malaysia has since declined to comment on what it had ruled out.

Yesterday, Khalid said that no details on the ongoing probe could be released as it may jeopardise investigations.

“If there is anything, I will make an announcement. But we have to understand that this is being investigated, and we are afraid that it could jeopardise our investigations,” he said yesterday.

Yesterday, Malaysia released the full transcript of the conversation between MH370’s pilots and air traffic controllers, but said there was “no indication of anything abnormal” in it.

A multinational search team now has less than a week to find the plane’s “black box” ― which records vital flight information ― before its battery life runs out, with the search so far failing to locate the plane.