SINGAPORE: A police report circulating online about an alleged attempted abduction of a boy at Jurong West Street 72 has been investigated, and the police have found that there was no attempted kidnapping, they said on Wednesday (Jan 24).

The police said in a statement posted on Facebook that they were aware that the report, made on Tuesday, had been circulating online.



"The police have thoroughly investigated into this case. We have verified that the report is untrue and the boy had lied to his parents," the authorities said.

In the police report of the alleged kidnap circulating online, the mother of the 10-year-old boy stated that her son had claimed that "some men" in a grey van had "told him to hop into the van", saying that his mother had sent them to fetch him.

The boy claimed that the incident took place while he was walking home with his friend at the traffic junction of Jurong West Street 72 and Jurong West Avenue 4.

The boy claimed that the van had slowed down as it approached them. When the vehicle came to a halt, a male passenger wound down one of the windows and asked him to get in.



Afraid, the two boys ran home and did not turn around to take note of the licence plate number, the boy claimed in the report.

"The police treat such reports seriously. At the same time, we urge members of the public not to speculate or spread unsubstantiated information which may generate unnecessary public alarm," the authorities said in their statement on Wednesday.

Earlier this month, the police found that two van drivers who had approached students from international schools - UWC South East Asia and Tanglin Trust School - and asked them to get into their vehicles were not trying to kidnap them, but merely offering lifts to the students.

Home Affairs and Law Minister K Shanmugam in a Facebook post on Monday warned of the need to be "careful of spreading untrue stories and unnecessarily alarming parents".

He said that some media reports had described the international school student incident as "kidnap scares" and that those were untrue.