POLICE have no leads on whether followers of controversial preacher Dr Zakir Naik or PAS supporters have aided Muslim convert Muhammad Riduan Abdullah in defying a court order by hiding his daughter.

Inspector-General of Police Abdul Hamid Bador, who is leading the police task force to locate Prasana Diksa, said no evidence had turned up to support the claims made by advocacy group Indira Gandhi Action Team (Ingat).

“There are no leads on this,” Hamid told reporters at an event in Kuala Lumpur today.

He said he was also taking a personal interest in the case.

“I am taking a personal interest in this. I want a happy ending, this case is very sad. I want the daughter to be reunited with the mother,” he added. 

Former kindergarten teacher M. Indira Gandhi, who won custody of all her three children, including Prasana the youngest, last year, last week named followers of Dr Zakir, southern Thai separatists and PAS-aligned groups in Kelantan and Terengganu, as those suspected of helping her ex-husband hide her daughter, who would be 11 now.

Indira said this in a police report filed at the Petaling Jaya district police headquarters.

Ingat, a group of activists taking up Indira’s case, said the information in the police report is based on public tip-offs.

Prasana was taken by Riduan when she was a baby 10 years ago, after he unilaterally converted her and two other children to Islam.

In January 2018, the Federal Court made a landmark decision in Indira’s favour, in which it said unilateral conversions of children by one parent were unlawful.

Indira is now seeking verifiable information on Riduan and Prasana. Riduan is also in defiance of a court order to return Prasana and is the subject of a mandamus order from the court for the police to arrest him.

PAS, meanwhile, has demanded Ingat apologise and retract its statement linking the Islamist party to Prasana’s abduction, calling it a malicious attempt to link the party to extremism. – July 29, 2019.