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Saturday, July 12, 2025

Little Umar given clean bill of health following ‘abduction’

Mom angry at relative who snatched child

by

Derek Achong
773 days ago
20230530
Adeeba Ali hugs her son Umar at their Quash Trace, Sangre Grande home yesterday, during an interview with Guardian Media.

Adeeba Ali hugs her son Umar at their Quash Trace, Sangre Grande home yesterday, during an interview with Guardian Media.

KERWIN PIERRE

Re­lief and anger.

These were the two emo­tions felt by 18-year-old San­gre Grande res­i­dent Adee­ba Ali, af­ter her two-year-old son Umar was found on Mon­day af­ter be­ing re­port­ed­ly ab­duct­ed by a close male rel­a­tive for al­most a week.

In a brief in­ter­view at her fam­i­ly’s home at Quash Trace, San­gre Grande, yes­ter­day af­ter­noon, Ali said she was in a state of dis­be­lief af­ter her sis­ter called to tell her that her son had been found by mem­bers of the Hunters’ Search and Res­cue Team in a forest­ed area off Barkar Trace, Coalmine, near to where the rel­a­tive lives.

“I did not be­lieve it at first be­cause I heard it be­fore from so many peo­ple this week,” Ali said yes­ter­day.

She said she on­ly felt a sense of re­lief af­ter she went to the San­gre Grande Po­lice Sta­tion and found her son draw­ing on a piece of pa­per while un­der the su­per­vi­sion of po­lice of­fi­cers.

“I felt re­lief when I heard the news but when I saw his con­di­tion I felt up­set know­ing that he (the rel­a­tive) put him through that,” she said, as she clutched the tod­dler tight­ly.

Ali said her son was med­ical­ly ex­am­ined and was found to be in gen­er­al good health, ex­cept for a few in­sect bites to his face.

While she said her son ap­peared hap­py to be re­unit­ed with her, she not­ed that his usu­al ap­petite had not re­turned.

“Usu­al­ly, every morn­ing he would want tea. When he got up this morn­ing, when I got the tea for him he did not drink it. He is not eat­ing at all right now, just a lit­tle ce­re­al and milk,” Ali said.

Al­though Ali did not vis­it the area where her son was be­ing held af­ter his ab­duc­tion, she claimed she was told that he was found in a ham­mock un­der a tar­pau­lin af­fixed to a tree. She said he was al­so found in just a makeshift di­a­per con­struct­ed from an over­sized T-shirt.

“He was smelling hor­ri­ble,” Ali said.

She sug­gest­ed that the child’s rel­a­tive must have had the as­sis­tance of friends and rel­a­tives, as the team that found him alone in the for­est camp found dis­card­ed food box­es near­by.

“He (the rel­a­tive) can­not put out mon­ey to buy pam­pers but can pay peo­ple to help him hide the boy,” she said.

Ali said be­fore her son’s ab­duc­tion, she had made an ap­pli­ca­tion to the Fam­i­ly Court for sole cus­tody of her son, which she would now con­tin­ue to pur­sue.

On Mon­day, a news team from Guardian Me­dia spoke to the child’s pa­ter­nal grand­moth­er, Zori­da Mo­hammed, who had al­so called on the rel­a­tive to re­turn the boy.

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.

The sus­pect was not ar­rest­ed up to late yes­ter­day.

In­ves­ti­ga­tions are con­tin­u­ing.


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