KUALA LUMPUR, Nov 22 — Clad in white and holding a stroller with an oversized teddy bear strapped in it while sitting on the road in front of the country’s police headquarters here this afternoon, M. Indira Gandhi and her group of supporters made a striking sight.
They were waiting for Inspector-General of Police Tan Sri Mohd Khalid Ismail, after hearing that he would meet them today.
Indira wanted to personally hand the teddy bear to the IGP as a symbolic gesture of how much she missed her younger daughter Prasana Diksa, who was snatched away in 2009 by her father Muhammad Riduan Abdullah after he converted from Hinduism to Islam when she was only 11 months old.
The police was ordered by the High Court this week to expand their search for the missing man and the child, who would be about 17 years old today.
The group were blocking one side of the two-lane traffic as vehicles, including buses carrying school children and tourists, drove past but the policemen on duty only kept watch.
“Where is he? Why is it so long for him to come?” Arun Dorasamy, who chairs the Indira Gandhi Action Team (Ingat), asked aloud.
The group had been waiting for a while, after a 40-minute walk from the Sogo shopping centre on Jalan Tuanku Abdul Rahman where they held a demonstration earlier.
Shortly after, two police officers came up to Arun and they stepped away to the road side for a talk.
Arun questioned the reason for the long wait, and police reportedly told the group they could continue their demonstration, but needed to move away from the middle of the road to enable the passage of vehicles.
However, Indira vowed that she would remain in front of Bukit Aman until the country’s top policeman met her.
“I will stand here until the IGP comes and takes Prasana’s teddy bear. I will be here waiting for him,” she said.
Her supporters broke into repeated chants of “We want IGP! We want IGP!”
Arun said he had sent both a letter and an email to the IGP several days earlier notifying him that Indira intended to hand over the teddy bear as a symbolic gesture.
Arun urged the IGP to “drop whatever you have” and come down to meet Indira.
The demonstration today, called the March for justice, comes after a viral social media post last month questioning the handling of case by the police and Attorney-General’s Chambers.
The post alleged that Muhammad Riduan who abducted Prasana Diksa is still in Malaysia and had even benefited from several government assistance programmes, despite previous statements by authorities that he was no longer in the country.
