Sahil Saeed was kidnapped while on holiday with his father. Photograph: Manchester Evening News
Pakistani police said today that the kidnapped British boy Sahil Saeed was still missing, dashing hopes raised after a politician said he had been found.
The controversial Punjab law minister, Rana Sanaullah, told Geo TV that Sahil, who was kidnapped from his grandmother's house in Jehlum a week ago, was rescued in Sialkot, a neighbouring city in the north-eastern Punjab province.
But Muhammad Aslam Tareen, a detective based in Punjab, said he could "categorically confirm" that the five-year-old, from Oldham, Greater Manchester, was still missing.
"We are closing in, yes. But have we found him yet? No. We hope to have something in the next 24 to 48 hours," Tareeen said.
Sanaullah had gone as far to say that Sahil had been sent back to the UK to be reunited with his father, and a man and woman had been arrested on kidnapping charges. He alleged thast two female relatives of Sahil had been involved in the kidnapping.
But Sanaullah appeared to have confused two different kidnapping cases.
Police said the rescued boy was not Sahil, and the minister was mistaken.
"I wish the news were true but it's not true," said Waqar Chohan, the senior police official from Sialkot. "We recovered one child, but that was not this case. That child was abducted from Rawalpindi."
The Jhelum police investigations superintendent, Khalid Mehmood, said he was unaware of reports that Sahil had been rescued.
Sanaullah, however, has not changed his statement, increasing the confusion.
British officials in Pakistan appeared to be in the dark.
George Sherriff, a spokesman for the British high commission in Islamabad, said: "We can't confirm anything." Staff were urgently checking the reports.
Raja Mohammad Basharat, a relative of Sahil, speaking from Jhelum, expressed the family's anger.
"We've been sitting here for eight days and no one is telling us anything," he said. "They [officials saying Sahil was found] are telling lies."
Basharat said he did not know the whereabouts of Sahil's father, Raja Naqqash Saeed, or whether he was still in Pakistan.
Sahil's father returned to the UK yesterday in defiance of Pakistani wishes that he remain there as a witness, according to reports.
Basharat also hit out at allegations that a member of the family was involved in the kidnapping – a claim repeated by Pakistan's interior minister, Rehman Malik, on Sunday.
"If someone in the family is involved, tell us, we'll co-operate, we are ready to help, we would also want to know. They haven't told us who, so why do they keep saying that?" he said.
Sahil and his father were on the last day of a two-week holiday when robbers broke into his grandmother's house.
The robbers made a ransom demand of £100,000 when they snatched Sahil and were understood to have repeated the demand in phone calls to his father. The Pakistani authorities contacted Interpol for help with the investigation after reports that the kidnappers called from international numbers, including one in Spain.
Pakistani officials have accused members of Sahil's family of being involved in the abduction. They denied the claims.
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