Penang DAP chairman Chow Kon Yeow (pic) says the party will let Bukit Bendera MP Zairil Khir Johari handle the photo scandal privately. — Picture by KE Ooi

GEORGE TOWN, April 20 ― Embattled Bukit Bendera MP Zairil Khir Johari will handle the photo scandal privately, Penang DAP chairman Chow Kon Yeow said today.

Chow issued a brief statement today in response to the recent spread of photos of a couple that closely resembled Zairil and another DAP member, Dyana Sofya Mohd Daud.

“Zairil had already given his explanations to me and DAP secretary-general Lim Guan Eng yesterday regarding newspaper reports linking him to photos being spread on social media,” the Padang Kota assemblyman said.

Chow said this is seen as a “personal attack” against Zairil so Zairil had requested to handle the whole issue privately for now.

In the last few days, intimate photos that purportedly resembled Zairil and Dyana were widely shared online and even published in newspapers.

The photos showed a couple sitting closely at a restaurant where the man's hand was around the woman's waist in one and another of them kissing.

This is not the first time such photos and videos were spread online. Last month, a video of a couple, also closely resembling Zairil and Dyana, dancing in close proximity at a nightclub was also spread online.

Zairil yesterday denied that he was the man depicted in the photos, insisting they are fake and yet another attack aimed at maligning him.

Dyana also responded to the photos with a statement on her Facebook page labelling it as a personal and vindictive attack in the run-up to the 14th general election, due next year.

She had been a candidate for the 2014 Teluk Intan parliamentary by-election but lost to Gerakan president Datuk Mah Siew Keong.