Interpol alerted to trace Sikh boy's background

Britain has roped in Interpol to verify the claims of an Indian couple who have said that a nine-year-old Sikh boy abandoned in Southall ten days ago was their kidnapped son.

Britain has roped in Interpol to verify the claims of an Indian couple who have said that a nine-year-old Sikh boy abandoned in Hartington Road Southall ten days ago was their kidnapped son.

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Referring to claims by Ganga Prasad and Bindia Devi from Aurangabad in Bihar that the boy Gurrinder was in fact their son Shintu Prasad, who vanished from outside their home in 2005, the Metropolitan Police today said "The couples' claims are being fully reviewed in consultation with Interpol and the Indian authorities as part of the ongoing investigation."

The boy, who speaks only Punjabi, and has been in the UK for two to three years, had wandered into a health centre in Punjabi-dominated Southall in West London last week after he was left at a bus stop by a "white uncle," with whom he has been living.

The boy claimed that that he had got to Southall on a 'bendy bus'. CCTV enquiries still form part of the police investigation, a spokesman of the Metropolitan Police said.

While the Director General of the Bihar Police Ashish Ranjan Sinha claimed in Patna that they had sent all concerned information about the boy to the Indian High Commission in London, a spokeswoman of the High Commission said they had not received the photograph of the boy who is in care now.

The Metropolitan police, in a public appeal, asked "anyone who may recognise Gurrinder or has information on this matter, to contact Ealing Missing Persons Unit."