RIYADH, 8 August — Parents of the missing Pakistani boy are losing all hopes of reuniting with their son, who disappeared mysteriously five months ago from a Riyadh suburb.
The parents have expressed dissatisfaction over the handling of the case by the local police and the Pakistan Embassy, saying that all efforts to trace the boy have drawn a blank.“The police and the Pakistan Embassy have no answers about my son”, said Jan Mohammed, father of the victim, here yesterday.
Mohammed said that members of his family are getting more and more worried about the boy, Abdul Rahman, as time passes on. “In fact, all my future plans have been hampered and there is nothing for me in this world”, he said. Mohammed said he has spoken to all his friends and foes in Saudi Arabia and in Pakistan and sought their help. This is in addition to the search operations launched by the local police.
“The only thing I can do now is to pray to Allah for help and for reuniting my family with my son,” said Rahman’s father in a choked voice. The 13-year -old boy was the third son from the first wife of Mohammed, who has six sons and one daughter. His family, which comes from Dera Ghazi Khan area in Pakistan, has been living in a Riyadh suburb for many years.
Police have released five persons who were detained earlier for questioning in the case.
They have not been able to trace the motorbike the boy was riding on the day he disappeared.
Th boys’ disappearance is not an isolated incident in the Kingdom. In March, two unidentified children were found and later picked up by a police patrol in Jeddah. According to published reports these missing children were found wandering on the Jeddah Corniche Road with tears in their eyes. In another case only a week earlier, six members of a gang were arrested while trying to smuggle 21 children into the Kingdom from Yemen to beg on the streets.
Also recently, a teenager girl went missing for many days from a Riyadh school until it was discovered lately that she had eloped with a man and landed in an Asian country.