P

olice have found 3-year-old Eka Dewi Lestari in a house in Indramayu, West Java, after being missing for three months.

The girl was kidnapped after buying snacks at a stall near her house in Kapuk, West Jakarta, on Nov. 24, last year.

Eka's father Ade Suryana said that he had searched for his daughter but to no avail.

"I reported the case to the Cengkareng Police on Nov. 25," Ade said.

"The officers followed up my report three weeks later."

While waiting for the result from the police, he added, he filed a similar report to the National Commission for Child Protection and asked for media aid to find his daughter.

Police identified the abductor as a 25-year-old woman named Santi.

Head of the municipality police office Sr. Comr. Kamil Razak said the police received a tip-off regarding Eka's location from one of Santi's neighbors.

Kamil said the neighbor told an investigator that Eka was at the suspect's mother's house in Indramayu, West Java.

During the three-month period, Ade said his daughter claimed that she had been physically abused.

"My daughter also said Santi was often angry at Eka and she was not allowed to leave the house," he said.

He said that Santi's neighbors in Indramayu had informed him that she also had changed her daughter's name to Ayu Nabila.

"Because of the incident, my daughter is traumatized, often crying," he said.

The 24-year-old man said that he had received a message from an unknown person who had asked for Rp 10 million (US$1,000) in exchange for his daughter.

Cengkareng Police subprecinct is investigating the motive for the abduction.

Cengkareng Police chief Comr. Hery Dian Dwiharto said Sunday that investigators found that Santi was a sex worker who lived and worked near the Kapuk neighborhood where Eka and her parents lived.

"We have yet to declare other suspects," Hery said.

"Santi admits she works alone."

He said Santi was currently being held at the subprecinct office.

Hery said that the perpetrator confessed to abducting the girl because she desired to be a mother, but police are investigating other possibilities.

"We have not discovered a link between the suspect with a child theft syndicate yet," he said.

He added that the office had questioned six people in the case and would perform a medical exa-mination on Eka tomorrow to determine if she had been physically assaulted.

Seto Mulyadi, National Com-mission for Child Protection chairman, said that his office had recorded a growing trend of kidnapping cases.

Throughout last year, it received 106 cases, a 30 percent increase from 70 cases a year earlier.

"Parent negligence is the major cause of kidnapping," Seto said.

He said that he urged all parents to teach their children to be vocal if they were approached by strangers.