RHON­DOR DOWLAT

Se­nior Re­porter

rhon­dor.dowlat@guardian.co.tt

Two-year-old Umar Ali un­der­went med­ical treat­ment at the San­gre Grande Hos­pi­tal late last night, af­ter be­ing res­cued by of­fi­cers of the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice.

The child’s moth­er, Adee­ba, 18, con­firmed to Guardian Me­dia that she was con­tact­ed by the po­lice some­time af­ter 4 pm and told that her child had been found, hav­ing been aban­doned by the sus­pect when he re­alised po­lice and a search team were clos­ing in on his lo­ca­tion.

In fact, po­lice last evening said the sus­pect re­mains at large and is now be­lieved to be hid­ing deep in a forest­ed area off Barkar Trace in San­gre Grande.

Speak­ing with Guardian Me­dia last evening while at the San­gre Grande Po­lice Sta­tion, the child’s un­cle, Habib Ali, said they were told that the po­lice re­ceived a tip-off that the sus­pect and the child were in a forest­ed area off Barkar Trace, near where the sus­pect lives.

The po­lice con­tact­ed mem­bers of the Hunters’ Search and Res­cue Team, led by Sham­sudeen Ayube, who sub­se­quent­ly made the trek about 300 feet in­to the forest­ed area off Barkar Trace in search of the child and sus­pect.

“They found Umar sit­ting in a ham­mock un­der a makeshift tent in the bush. They didn’t find the sus­pect be­cause it look like when he hear the po­lice and hunters com­ing in, he fled deep­er in­to the forest­ed area, leav­ing the child be­hind. Umar was res­cued and tak­en to the San­gre Grande Po­lice Sta­tion, where his mom and I went and met the po­lice to fill out some pa­per­work,” a re­lieved Habib told Guardian Me­dia in a tele­phone in­ter­view.

“Af­ter that, they will take us to­geth­er with the child to the hos­pi­tal for a thor­ough med­ical ex­am­i­na­tion to check to see if there are any in­juries and oth­er things they’d be look­ing for I guess,” he added.

Ear­li­er yes­ter­day, when Guardian Me­dia vis­it­ed the child’s moth­er, she had called on her son’s ab­duc­tor to re­turn her son safe­ly.

“I am wor­ried about him. I don’t know if he eat­ing or drink­ing,” a wor­ried Ali said tears flow­ing from her eyes.

“You who take the child, you is the on­ly per­son who could bring him back and I am beg­ging you please bring him back be­cause I am very wor­ried and I need my child and I would not send any­one for you again. He just re­al­ly need to come back home to me.”

The child’s pa­ter­nal grand­moth­er, Zori­da Mo­hammed, was al­so vis­it­ed by the Guardian Me­dia’s team, where she al­so called for the boy to be brought back home to his moth­er.

“I wish he (re­fer­ring to the sus­pect) bring back the child where­so­ev­er he is. I don’t know where the child is be­cause I per­son­al­ly would have go and take the child and bring it. Get some­body to go for the child.”

Mo­hammed said she knew the close male rel­a­tive who took the child but added that she had not seen him or heard from him since the ab­duc­tion last week.

How­ev­er, Guardian Me­dia was told that af­ter our team left Mo­hammed’s res­i­dence at Barkar Trace, some­one from the area called the po­lice and tipped them off on the where­abouts of the sus­pect.

The po­lice then no­ti­fied the Hunters’ Search and Res­cue team and to­geth­er met up with them and trekked in­to the for­est where they lat­er found lit­tle Umar alone.

One week ago, two-year-old Umar was snatched by a close male rel­a­tive from his home in San­gre Grande. The child was asleep at the time.