ISLAMABAD: Controversial statements given by Pakistan’s Provincial Law Minister regarding the recovery of a British child and repeated denials of this report from Pakistani police have further deepened the mystery of Sahil Saeed – a five-year-old British national who was kidnapped by armed gunmen on March 3 from Jhelum district of Pakistan. On Thursday morning, Provincial Minister for Law & Justice Rana Sanaullah told reporters that police have recovered Sahil Saeed, while three people including a lady had been arrested in this connection. When contacted on Thursday, the Provincial Minister of law and justice told Bikya Masr that police had recovered the baby. “Yes police have recovered five-year old Sahil Saeed from Sialkot [another well established district of Pakistan’s province Punjab] in the wee hours ours of Wednesday; I appreciate the efforts of [the] investigation team, which after continuous struggle, recovered the baby,” the Minister said. Sanaullah said Saeed was rescued during a police raid in the neighboring district of Sialkot on Wednesday. Three suspected kidnappers, including a woman, were arrested. However, the police official denied Sahil’s recovery throughout Thursday. Interestingly, the Minister backed out of his earlier statement and said there was a mistaken identity of the child that had led to his earlier statement. Elaborating his point, the Minister said police had recovered another child resembling Sahil. Sanaullah, has since apologized after wrongly revealing that authorities had recovered Saeed. A spokesperson of the provincial government said on Thursday that the missing child discovered in Sialkot is another boy, from Garrison City of Rawalpindi. “It was a case of mistaken identity, which has been spread by the media. The Minister was also mistaken,” a spokesperson told Bikya Masr when contacted on Thursday evening. Police claimed on Thursday that a number of arrests had been made over the five-year-old's disappearance, including one woman, adding that police were optimistic to recover the child soon. An investigator told Bikya Masr that police have received clues and “will find him soon.” He added that investigations have “revealed the members of the boy's family are involved in his kidnapping.” The claim has been supported by Pakistan’s High Commissioner in London, who told Bikya Masr via telephone from London “it seems an internal tiff between family members has caused this crisis. “The family is quite a large one and they must be shifting the boy from one place to another.” The latest development merely adds to the confusion surrounding the disappearance of the boy from Oldham. Yesterday, it was reported that Raja Saeed, the boy's father, had returned to the UK. The kidnapping case took another dramatic turn again Thursday evening when Saeed’s grandfather revealed that the father went missing two days. Sources from law enforcement agencies told Bikya Masr that Naqqash Saeed had been receiving life threats following his child’s kidnapping, so he himself has gone underground. BM
