Freelance investigative journalist Bao Choy had a case to answer for allegedly giving false statements to obtain car details from the government related to a 2019 Yuen Long mob attack, a magistrate said on Wednesday.

There was a prima facie case against Choy based on the evidence presented in court, Principal Magistrate Ivy Chui found.

Choy, a contract staffer with public broadcaster Radio Television Hong Kong, has pleaded not guilty to two counts of making false declarations under the Road Traffic Ordinance. The case concerned online searches of a publicly available government database she conducted last year in the course of producing two episodes of “Hong Kong Connection,” a TV documentary series aired on RTHK, to report on the mass attack in a Yuen Long train station.

During the trial at the West Kowloon Magistrates’ Courts, the prosecution read out a witness statement by an employee of the Transport Department, which managed the database.

People should make a vehicle registration search for only “transport-related proceedings,” “the sale or purchase of a vehicle” or “other traffic and transport-related matters,” Derek Lau, senior assistant director of public prosecutions from the Department of Justice, read out in court.

Choy twice selected “other traffic and transport-related matters” as the purpose of her auto plate searches when she filled in a form on the internet on May 17 and June 10 last year, the court heard.

The prosecution said that after retrieving the data, Choy on June 22 went with a colleague to the vehicle registration address and requested an interview with the car owner. She received a phone call from the owner the next day and asked about the sighting of the car in Yuen Long on the night of the mob mayhem.

Choy’s online searches had nothing to do with traffic or transport matters, and constituted an abuse of the information, the prosecution added.

The search results of the vehicle shown in the documentary were for the use of Choy’s reporting, the content of which was unrelated to transport, the court heard.

Choy’s lawyer, Derek Chan SC, argued that the journalist was not wrong to declare that her search was connected to transport matters, as she was trying to find out who owned a car which might have been involved in taking weapons to the attackers.

Chan also noted that the department provided only three options for applicants to state the purpose of their car plate searches. A fourth option, which had said “Others, please specify,” was deleted in January last year and replaced with “Other traffic and transport-related matters.” There was nothing else that Choy could choose to fill in the application form, he said.

“Other traffic and transport-related matters” was a generalized term, Chan said, citing a previous ruling. “Related matters” should be considered in the broadest interpretation when applied to the case, he added.

The defense said the prosecution could not prove beyond a reasonable doubt all three elements of the charges against Choy, that she “knowingly” made a “false statement” in a “material particular for the purpose.”

On July 21, 2019, a large number of thugs dressed in white randomly beat passengers and passersby with rods on the platform of the train station, at a time when widespread protests were raging in Hong Kong.

Choy produced two television episodes on the Yuen Long case. She traced a few auto license plates and located the owners of cars seen carrying some of the suspected attackers, and also interviewed witnesses and local residents about the controversial incident.

The evidence Choy gathered revealed how police officers had been patrolling the town that night as the white mob roamed the streets carrying weapons. The officers took no action to intervene despite seeing what was going on in the area. They also failed to respond when the armed mob struck dozens of commuters inside Yuen Long station late that night.

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