KUALA LUMPUR, Nov 24 — Nora Anne Quoirin, who went missing from The Dusun resort in Negri Sembilan last year and was later found deceased, was initially discovered with minor scratches on her legs and multiple insect bites all over her body, a crime scene investigator told the Coroner’s Court today.

Testifying at Quoirin’s inquest as the 42nd witness, Assistant Superintendent S. Udiasoorian said that initial observations at the scene also found that there were neither footprints in the stream where the teenager’s body was found nor any disturbance to the soil in its immediate surroundings on August 13, 2019.

“Around 3.15pm on August 13, 2019, I and my team from the Negri Sembilan police contingent’s D10 (Forensic Laboratory Division) arrived at an oil palm plantation.

“Upon our arrival, we discovered the nude corpse of a female child who we believed was a foreigner based on her brown hair, light blue eyes and fair skin.

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“My team and I then performed our checks on the body and found no traces of injuries except scratches on the legs and insect bites all over the body,” he said during the inquest hearing that was conducted via video-conferencing.

In affirming there were no serious injuries sustained, Udiasoorian said this was evident when he conducted a detailed check of the body from head to toe.

However, he agreed that this was based on his external observation of the body when it was found and that any internal injuries sustained by Quoirin during the time of her disappearance had yet to be ascertained.

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Udiasoorian also recounted the exact position of the body when found: Quoirin was discovered lying horizontally but tilted to her left in a foetal position in a slow-flowing stream.

He also explained how his team failed to find any physical evidence within a 100-metre radius of the body, which then prompted him to collect soil samples from beneath the body and surrounding areas for comparison later on.

“We tried our best to collect evidence at the scene, whether it was cigarette butts or anything else, but there was nothing there except the body which we saw.

“That is why we collected the soil samples for the purpose of comparison if an arrest was made,” he added.

When asked if he had taken fingerprint samples from Quoirin, Udiasoorian replied in the negative, saying he did not want to contaminate the victim’s hand which he wrapped in an evidence collection bag in order for pathologists to take their own samples thereafter.

Apart from evidence collection, Udiasoorian also said he took measurements such as the depth of the stream and the body’s distance from the bank of the stream at the crime scene.

Separately, he also testified he was instructed to collect evidence prior to August 13, 2019 from Sora House at The Dusun resort where Quoirin and her family had been staying since their arrival on August 3, 2019.

“On August 7, 2019, I was asked to head to the aforementioned location by the investigating officer Inspector Wan Faridah Mustanin at 11am to assist the evidence collection.

“At the location, I collected three swabbings believed to be perspiration samples, three hair samples belonging to the missing person and eight fingerprints from the second floor of the villa,” he said.

Nora Anne, a 15-year-old with learning difficulties, disappeared from the resort last year where she was staying with her London-based family, triggering a 10-day hunt involving helicopters, sniffer dogs and hundreds of searchers.

Her body was discovered close to the jungle retreat and an autopsy found that she likely died of internal bleeding linked to starvation after spending about a week in the dense rainforest.