OPINION: When Ipoh district police chief Abang Zainal Abidin Abang Ahmad declared that “public cooperation is crucial to ensure the successful execution of the court warrant,” he was not stating a fact. He was confessing a failure.
The police are not asking for help with a fresh investigation; they are asking the public to do what they have demonstrably failed to do for over a decade and a half -- enforce the law.
This call, issued two days ago on fugitive Muhammad Riduan Abdullah, is not a routine appeal. It is the exhausted finale of a 16-year saga of institutional paralysis.
To frame this as a community responsibility is to distort reality. Previous sightings of Riduan and his activities were not taken seriously.
The failure of the police to trace him remains a stain on Malaysia’s law enforcement system and the dispensation of justice.
SOME BACKGROUND: In 2009, Indira Gandhi’s then-husband unilaterally converted their three children to Islam and fled with their 11-month-old daughter, Prasana Diksa. In 2014, the Ipoh High Court annulled the conversion and issued a warrant for his arrest for contempt.
It also ordered that he return Prasana to her mother.
For ten years since that warrant, and for sixteen years since the abduction, the child has been missing, and the court orders have been gathering dust.
For years, contradictory police and ministerial statements have given the illusion of progress, while court orders gathered dust.
In August 2020, then Home Minister Hamzah Zainuddin stated that Riduan was believed to be living abroad and frequently changing locations to avoid detection.
How did he get a passport? How did he clear our immigration checkpoints? Weren’t his details sent to the Immigration authorities? Didn’t the High Court order from 2014 instruct the police to block his exit from the country? If so, wasn’t it a dereliction of duty?
The claim that Riduan had left the country has been met with public cynicism and contradictory evidence over the years affirmed such beliefs.
But in 2021 and 2022, it was revealed that two vehicles were registered in his name in Malaysia in 2015 and 2017, and his driving license was renewed in May 2021, leading to questions about his confirmed location.
But Hamzah said the government could not block Riduan from buying two vehicles as there was no court order to stop the transactions.
This issue was even questioned by Ipoh High Court Judicial Commissioner Bhupindar Singh, who asked Senior Federal Counsel Nur Idayu Amir why police have not been able to locate Muhammad Riduan despite two cars that were registered under his name in 2015 and 2017 in Malaysia, while the authorities had confirmed that he had left the country in 2014.
“If following the record, he had left the country in 2014. How then can he buy a Mercedes-Benz in 2015 and Nissan Frontier 2.5 in 2017 here?
“Why didn’t the police investigate the seller, the person who made the payment, how the payment was made and how was the transfer of ownership done?
No plausible answers could be provided by the counsel nor the police.
Late last year, Indira’s lawyers alleged that Riduan had been redeeming government aid (Budi95 and Sara credits), which requires a MyKad and must be done within Malaysia, suggesting he is still be in the country or someone is using his identity.
Police affidavits in late 2025 mentioned investigating the ex-husband's use of government aid schemes (BUDI95 and SARA), which require MyKad verification within Malaysia, proving he was in the country.
Indira has been seeking justice from the courts, but orders issued by the court were not complied with fully.
“In 2014, the High Court ordered monthly police affidavits. Seventy-nine went missing. Those eventually filed were near-identical, described by Indira’s lawyers as ‘utterly unacceptable.’”
The lawyers specifically highlighted their belief that the police were not serious in their investigation, as the content of recent affidavits.
They were described as “utterly unacceptable” and “almost identical” to previous filings, showing a lack of proactive effort.
In November last year, a High Court judge ordered the police to conduct a more proactive, nationwide search and demanded more substantive updates.
Police affidavits in late 2025 mentioned investigating the ex-husband's use of government aid schemes (BUDI95 and SARA), which require MyKad verification within Malaysia, proving he was in the country.
Yet, the prevailing police posture remains one of passive inquiry, culminating in this latest plea for tips.
This is not about a lack of public cooperation. It is about a stunning lack of police efficacy and urgency. The “complex dual legal system” is often cited, but it serves here as a smokescreen for inaction.
The civil courts have been unequivocal: -- the conversion was void, custody belongs to Indira, and the father is a fugitive -- to be arrested. The police’s role is to execute that order, not to lament its complexity.
The real issue laid bare is one of selective enforcement and a corrosive lack of accountability. What does it say about the rule of law when a binding warrant from the High Court can be ignored for a decade by the very institution tasked with upholding it?
It says that for some, the law is a suggestion. It tells the public that justice is not blind, but bureaucratic -- and that it can be stalled indefinitely or ignored.
Abang Zainal’s statement treats a 16-year-old failure as a new case requiring fresh public assistance. This is an insult to Indira’s endurance and to the public’s intelligence. The police do not need “cooperation” to begin doing their job; they need to demonstrate the competence and will to finally do it.
The call should not be for the public to feed information into a void. The call must be for the police leadership to account for 16 years of delay, to dedicate real resources to a targeted manhunt, and to prove that the state’s authority is not hollow.
After silencing a mother for so long, the police must now be judged by their actions, not their appeals. Prasana Diksa is now a teenager. How much longer must she, her mother, and justice wait?”
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