Friday, September 14, 2007

Two children found wandering about in two M'sian cities


Found: Little lost kids
But Nurin still missing
Photo of Nurin taken from posters. -- Pictures: NSTP
September 13, 2007

IT was a tale of two teachers, three missing children and mistaken identity on Monday in Malaysia.

Two teachers found two stray children, one in Johor Baru and the other in Kuala Lumpur.

And for a while, there was a sense of hope as a little girl who wandered into a kindergarten in Gombak, Kuala Lumpur, looked like Nurin Jazlin Jazimin, who has been missing since 20 Aug.

At about 10am on Monday, a teacher at the kindergarten near Tasik Puteri saw a little girl who looked to be 8 or 9years old wandering into the school compound, reported Harian Metro.

LOOKED LIKE NURIN

Several people in the area felt the girl looked like Nurin, who has been in the news recently. Nurin went missing after leaving home to go to a nearby night market in Kuala Lumpur last month.

The kindergarten teacher took the child to a nearby police station.

The little girl appeared cheerful, but remained quiet when questioned, reported Berita Harian Malaysia.

At the police station, officers compared the child to photographs of Nurin and concluded that she was not Nurin.

Around noon, the little girl's parents appeared at the station to report her disappearance. The police said it turned out the child was intellectually disabled.

That same afternoon, in Johor Baru, another teacher, Madam Khatijah Kadeer Batcha, 46, had just come out of a bank and was walking down a small road when she ran into a sobbing 3-year-old boy at about 2.45pm.


Madam Khatijah told Harian Metro: 'He was dishevelled and had little welts on his arms as if he had been bitten by mosquitoes and his clothes were grubby.'

She said the boy was dressed in a T-shirt and white shorts.

She was concerned to see the state the child was in and tried to find out more about him.

But, she said, the only thing the boy would say was that his name was Hafiz.

Madam Khatijah said she couldn't just leave the boy to wander around alone as she was afraid he might go missing. So she took him to the front of a clinic nearby, and waited with him for almost half an hour.

She was hoping the boy's parents might turn up, looking for him.

When that did not happen, the secondary school teacher took the boy to a nearby police station at about 3pm.

She said: 'A few hours later, I called the police station and was told the boy was still there.'

Harian Metro reported that the boy's mother turned up to claim him that evening.

Meanwhile, Nurin is still missing.

A member of the public has offered a RM18,000 ($7,800) reward for any information leading to her recovery.

Yesterday was the girl's 8th birthday, reported Bernama. Her parents spent the day praying for her safety.

- Electric New Paper (Singapore)

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