Kidnapped Brit toddler safe, alive: Pak police

Islamabad, Mar .10 : Pakistan police officials have claimed that British toddler Sahil Saeed, who was kidnapped from Punjab's Jhelum last week, is safe and alive and that investigation agencies were close to recovering him.

"The child is safe. We made some progress and hopefully, we''ll sort out this case soon," Khalid Mehmood, who is leading the investigations in Jhelum, told a foreign news agency.

Five-year old Sahil was abducted from his grandmother's house in Jhelum on last Thursday as he was about to leave along with his father to catch a flight back to London.

Earlier, Interior Minister Rehman Malik had said that there was growing evidence of the involvement of some family members in the abduction.

Talking to reporters in Islamabad, Malik said investigations suggest the hand of some one very close to the family being involved in Sahil's abduction.

"There was someone very close to the family because of the way the situation happened, the way the abduction has happened, the way the entry was made, the way the conduct was made during that whole operation," Malik said.

Meanwhile, sources have revealed that Sahil had travelled to Pakistan with his father after a row between his parents that left his mother Akila Naqqash stranded in their Oldham home, allegedly without her passport.

Family elders in Jhelum had encouraged a rapprochement between the couple, and the father and son were preparing to fly home when the kidnapping occurred, The Times reports.

Pakistani police officials had claimed to solve the case within 24 hours on Thursday, when Sahil was kidnapped, but admitted that they were clueless even after three days post the abduction.

"We are totally blind with no clue in hand so far about the kidnapped child, but our investigation continues. We are concerned about the safety and security of the child," senior police official Raja Mohammad Tahir Bashir, who is heading a team of officials working on the case, had said on Sunday.