Rescued boy minutes away from being killed by kidnappers in Port Dickson

SHAH ALAM - A five-year-old boy who was kidnapped and held by his captors in Port Dickson for nine days was just minutes away from seeing a deadly end when a special police crack team barged into a service apartment and rescued him.

Sources said investigators learnt that the kidnappers had planned to murder the victim before dawn and dispose his body at an undisclosed location.

South Klang district police chief ACP Kamarulzaman Mamat said no ransom was paid after days of the abduction and the kidnappers had intended to abandon their pursuit for the RM850,000 they had demanded from the victim's family.

He said the boy who was heavily drugged by his kidnappers and was in delirium when found was fed minimally throughout his ordeal.

He said the case was solved with the arrest of six suspects aged 16 and 32.

The victim did not have injuries on his body but is being warded at the Tuanku Jaafar Hospital, Seremban, for observation due to the high doses of drugs he was fed.

He is reported to be in stable condition.

A group of men, several of them believed to be known to the victim's father, a businessman, brazenly snatched the victim from his house in Taman Maznah in the presence of his mother and a sibling in the early hours of Jan 22.

Later, the kidnappers sent out a text message to his family with a mobile phone they had stolen from them during the kidnapping, demanding the ransom be paid in Australian, US and Malaysian currency.

Selangor police promptly assembled a team to investigate the case and within days, as negotiations between the victim's family and the kidnappers went on, they traced the whereabouts of the boy to a service apartment situated along the beach of Port Dickson.

With the assistance of personnel from the federal police CID, round-the-clock surveillance was carried out before police moved in on Sunday at 12am.

Members of the elite federal police Special Task Force on Organised Crime (STAFOC) stormed into the apartment unit and rescued the boy.

Five suspects were arrested while a sixth was held two hours later in Subang Permai.

Early investigations showed that there were no other motives behind the abduction except for ransom.

Relatives and friends had posted a plea to the public on Facebook and other social media channels urging them to look out for the boy. - Sundaily