Dubai Police reveal more details of child ‘lost’ in mall

Hamza M Sengendo, Staff Reporter

A woman who handed a ‘lost child’ to Al Muraqqabat Police Station was complicit in a botched scheme to get rid of him, police revealed on Thursday.

Police discovered that the child’s Asian mother gave birth to him five years ago. She handed him over to a countrywoman two days after his birth. She left the country for good. Accomplices decided to chuck him.

“A woman came claiming she found him near Reef Mall. And that she decided to bring him to the police station after noticing that he remained alone for a long time,” said the police station director Brigadier Ali Ghanem.

Police on Sept.8 appealed to all members of the public to help identify the child, by posting his photo on various forms of media. An hour and a half after later, someone contacted the police confirming he knew him.

The caller said he saw him with a woman staying in Sharjah. Dubai Police in coordination with Sharjah Police traced and arrested her. During questioning, she revealed he was not her own son.

She explained that his mother had requested her to take care of him briefly on grounds she wanted to travel to their homeland and return quickly. However, the mother travelled abroad and never came back.

The woman confirmed she did not know the mother’s address, nor her phone number nor that of any of her relatives. This prompted her to adopt and raise the child hopping that his mother would return one day.

She stayed with him for five years until she reached a stage where she could no longer keep him because of her financial inability to provide for his personal and daily requirements, especially education and health care.

This prompted her to consult a friend on steps to take. The latter advised her to give him to another woman to raise him. Upon the advice of the latter, she handed the child to a woman in Al Muteena area.

The woman took him for a while then consulted one of her friends on how to get rid of him. She advised her to fabricate the story of finding him, hand him to the police station and submit a report about the incident.

Police apprehended four women implicated in the botched move. DNA tests proved no one of them was the child’s biological mother. Police have referred them to the Dubai Public Prosecution for legal action.