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Relatives say drug addict dad confessed he sold daughter, 2

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S'porean couple surrenders missing M'sian child to JB police

A Singaporean couple surrendered a toddler to Johor police yesterday. The child was reported to have been missing since November.

The toddler's relatives received the news from Malaysian reporters, said Singapore's Chinese daily Lianhe Wanbao.

Initially, her birth father claimed that his daughter had been kidnapped. He had made a report to Johor Baru police a month after the little girl went missing in early November.

The father claimed that a male friend had taken two-year-old Angie Tiong for a walk from a budget hotel in an area near the Causeway and never returned.

He also said that before the friend had left, the man, whom he had met that very day, gave him a "few thousand ringgit".

But the child's relatives have gone to the Malaysian press and said that Angie's father had told them a different story.

The man, a drug addict, confessed to selling his child for 12,000 ringgit (S$4,000).

In an interview with China Press, the two relatives shared that Angie's father, a 33-year-old unemployed Perak native, initially lied to the police that his daughter had been kidnapped by five of his friends.

After rounds of thorough questioning, he finally admitted that he had sold off Angie at a law firm with the assistance of a middleman.

Once the deal was sealed, the middleman took away Angie's passport, as well as all legal documents.

THE NEW PAPER, DEC 31

'DRUG-ADDLED'

The relatives said that Angie's father, known only as Mr Tiong, "was in a perpetual drug-addled state" and that his account of the events was vague at best.

They said Mr Tiong could not provide details of his transaction, such as which law firm he had gone to.

When asked by China Press whether Mr Tiong had been detained for investigation, Johor Baru police declined to comment.

Johor Baru South OCPD Assistant Commissioner Sulaiman Salleh told China Press that he "does not want the public making predictions and assumptions about this case".

Johor Baru police had earlier arrested three men - a cook, a labourer and an unemployed man aged between 30 and 33 - in connection with the case.

Angie's relatives told China Press that Angie "was abandoned" by her Vietnamese mother when she was five months old.

Her mum and dad argued frequently and her mother went back to Vietnam alone, said the relatives.

Mr Tiong has been in and out of jail many times, they claimed.

The relatives claimed they took along Angie's birth certificate to the Causeway immigration checkpoint, where they "discovered that Angie had an entry record into Singapore" between Nov 9 and Dec 11 last year.

The relatives have vowed to fight for her custody, so that she can be under their care for good, added the female relative.

- Additional reporting by Linette Heng

malaysiakidnappingUncategorisedMissing PersondaughterdrugsAddictionSingapore