Managing Director of Reeaz Trading Enterprises Ltd, Reeaz Khan, yesterday flouted a court order issued by Justice BS Roy on Thursday directing him to release a 13-year-old girl, whom he had allegedly abducted.
He was ordered to hand the child into the joint custody of her mother and aunt and to refrain from contacting her.
Instead, Khan reportedly abducted the teenager from her aunt's home around 1 am yesterday despite his earlier commitment to the court through his attorneys to refrain from any form of contact with her.
An attorney for Bibi Shameeza Hamid, the mother, has begun contempt proceedings against Khan and has since written to Police Commissioner Winston Felix requesting a thorough investigation into the matter and providing a synopsis of the facts of the case.
Stabroek News spoke with Hamid yesterday and she said that around 7:30 pm on Thursday, Khan's maid went to the home of the teenager's aunt with an offering of food but she (Hamid) refused to take the food.
The maid subsequently left, according to Hamid, and she and her son traced the woman and observed her enter a car with the licence plate number PJJ 1000, known to her to be Khan's vehicle, a short distance away.
However, Hamid recalled that the maid left a charger for the teen's cellular phone. She then received a number of calls on it.
Hamid said she and her son went back to her sister's home - located a short distance from her - and then to her own home. At the time, her teenage daughter had been chatting with her aunt, Hamid related.
"About one o'clock this morning, my sister call me on my cell phone and say 'come quick' and by the time I reach up my sister and we run to the dam, we see [the teenager] go in the same car, PJJ 1000, and it drive off," Hamid told Stabroek News.
She said her sister told her that the teenager had chatted with her and her husband until the couple went to bed around 11 pm but that the sister had been awakened by a sound at the back door.
"And when she get up she see my daughter hurrying out. But by the time she get on to me, it was too late," Hamid said.
The police were contacted but failed to locate Khan and the teenager. But one of Khan's attorneys reportedly spoke with Hamid later yesterday and told her to collect her daughter at Prasad's Hospital.
Up to press time yesterday, the teenager had not been returned to the custody of her mother and/or aunt.
Hamid, a single parent, said she first became acquainted with Khan as a result of his regular contribution of food items for poor persons to the mosque in her community. She said he had approached her and inquired about the welfare of her daughter. He had later offered to accommodate her daughter at his business establishment at 37 Camp Street, George-town, to participate in a 'work- study' exercise during the Easter vacation.
The teenager never return-ed home and when Hamid contacted Khan he promptly informed her that the teenager was in his charge and that he did not intend to release her.
According to Hamid, she experienced severe difficulty getting assistance from the police in the matter, hence her lawyer's appeal to Commis-sioner Felix.
The teenager, Hamid said, admitted having sexual relations with Khan and a medical examination at the George-town Public Hospital confirmed this.
In a desperate bid to end her nightmare and in the face of severe emotional stress, Hamid said she approached the Ministry of Human Services and Social Security and the teenager was then sent to the Women's Institute at Cove & John on the East Coast Demerara without her (Hamid's) consent. While at the institute, Khan again managed to abduct the teenager and it was this that forced the distraught and deeply frustrated Hamid to take legal action in the High Court.
It is expected that further legal action will be taken on Monday.