POLICE have not been able to find any record of Prasana Diksa, the 11-year-old girl separated from her mother Indira Gandhi for the past 10 years, despite conducting an extensive search for the girl after a court order.

This was revealed in a meeting between the police top brass and civil society group, Indira Gandhi Action Force (Ingat), at the federal police headquarters in Bukit Aman last week.

Ingat chairman Arun Dorasamy, who attended the meeting with Inspector-General of Police Mohamad Fuzi Harun, told The Malaysian Insight that both parties exchanged notes on what they had but it was not much.

“There is absolutely no record of the girl. Government school, government hospital, religious associations, private hospitals, private schools showed no record of her,” said Arun.

“It is like she is non-existent.”

Prasana was last seen in 2010 when she was 11 months old. She was taken away by her Muslim convert father, Muhammad Riduan Abdullah, from her Hindu mother, Indira.

“Even the police have no information on her whereabouts. We are more interested about her wellbeing,” Arun said.

Commenting on the meeting at Bukit Aman last Friday, Arun said Indira and lawyers from Ingat were also present.

“The IGP was there, the acting CID director was there and several other police officers. We discussed this case for about two hours and we also compared notes.”

This was the first meeting between an inspector-general of police and Indira in the case which has dragged on for almost a decade.

Ingat came into the picture recently when it offered a reward of RM10,000 for information leading to Prasana’s whereabouts.

Arun said during the meeting, Fuzi agreed to reclassify the case as a missing person’s and to include Ingat as part of a new task force to trace the girl.

“We made it clear that we wanted to be part of the task force. The IGP agreed. 

“The task force members will be decided after the new IGP is installed (next month) and we will have our first meeting then,” Arun said.

The group suspects that Prasana might have been registered as “late registration” by her father, a ploy commonly used in Kelantan by parents whose children are born at home. 

Both police and Ingat believe that is why there is no trace of Prasana.

According to Arun, informers said Riduan was last sighted in Kelantan in 2014.

At a press conference yesterday, Fuzi said acting CID director Huzni Mohamed will head the task force.

The police chief, however, could not confirm if Riduan and Prasana were still in the country.

“There have been reports that he was in Kelantan and Johor. But he has not been found yet,” Fuzi said.

Riduan, who as K. Pathmanathan, married Indira in April 1996 and they had three children.

In 2009, however, Riduan took the children away after a bitter divorce and converted them to Islam. The Ipoh shariah court granted Riduan permanent custody of the three children.

A year later, the Ipoh High Court granted Indira full custody of the children and three years later, in July 2013, the same high court annulled the children’s conversion, ruling that unilateral conversion was unconstitutional. The older two children were returned to Indira but not Prasana.

In May 2014, the Ipoh High Court ordered the arrest of Riduan and for Prasana to be reunited with Indira. 

Two years later, the Federal Court ordered then IGP Khalid Abu Bakar to arrest Riduan for contempt of court but until today, father and daughter could not be located. – April 26, 2019.