Image of alleged kidnapper caught on surveillance tape
-parents wait in agony for results

THERE is still no definite information on the whereabouts of the now 13-day-old ‘Avinash’ of Number 60 Village, Corentyne, who was kidnapped in broad daylight on Saturday, May 24.However, four days into the ordeal, his parents are hopeful that results would be forthcoming following the release of an image of the alleged kidnapper, who identified herself as Bibi Khan, an assumed alias, from the Surinamese border town of Nickerie.

The images were taken off surveillance tapes from a business place Khan and the child’s mother, Sandra McLean, called ‘Pinky’, visited on the day of the kidnapping.

Mc Lean alleges that the suspected kidnapper had met her at the hospital where she was admitted for delivery, and had befriended her, expressing an interest in the newborn. She described Khan as an Indian woman of medium build in her forties, with a gold tooth and a nose ring. Mc Lean said, “She had on a khemar (Muslim headdress) but if I see her anywhere I will recognise her. This woman come to me so nice and I don’t have a mother, so I own she like a mother. She talk nice about the baby and seh he is like a grandson.

“On Saturday, it was the ‘nine day’ (a traditional celebration of the birth of the child), and she come and say she will make the baby happy today on he special day… When we went to

market to buy some things, she send me to buy hassar (fish) and seh she will stay one place with the baby so he don’t get upset by the smell.

“My mind tell me don’t leave the baby, but I say she is not like that…. Now meh baby gone! I don’t know if she never made a child so she don’t feel for me.”

Mc Lean is also worried that the child may not accept being fed by a bottle, because since birth he has only been breast fed. “I just want meh baby back home,” she said.

McLean has mothered two other boys, aged three and five, and she says the older boy keeps asking for his brother.

POLICE COOPERATING
Commander of Police ‘A’ Division, Senior Superintendent Clifton Hicken, noted in an invited comment yesterday that his division is assisting the work of Assistant Commissioner Brian Joseph, who heads the ‘B’ Division.

He noted that there has so far been no strong lead in the case, but he maintained that all efforts to return the missing child to his mother continue apace.

“…information (is) coming in, and we are treating everything as important,” Hicken said.

‘B’ Division Head Brian Joseph told the Guyana Chronicle that the police will be looking at all leads. “We are working on all the information we have to locate the child,” he said.

Asked if contact had been made with the Surinamese police, Joseph said there is nothing as yet to suggest that the alleged kidnapper is from Suriname, as she had claimed. However, he added that the surveillance tapes from which the images of Khan were lifted are being looked at, and the Surinamese police will be engaged in the event that Khan did indeed cross the border with the child.

“There is nothing new, except that we are going to be looking at the footage from the surveillance tapes,” Joseph said.

The police are continuing their investigation, and anyone with information in relation to this case is being asked to contact the nearest police station, or the couple on telephone numbers 338-1297, 660-2651 or 693-9484.

(By Vanessa Narine)