A woman was sent to jail on Wednesday for allegedly kidnapping a 7-year-old girl from her grandmother and bringing her from Kampong Cham to Phnom Penh, according to police.
Eam Vanny, Kampong Cham deputy police chief, said suspect Him Rony, 25, was arrested on Monday for “unlawful removal” of a child from Kampong Cham’s Srey Santhor district to Phnom Penh without telling the child’s caretaker.
The Kampong Cham Provincial Court sent Rony to pretrial detention and charged her under Article 9 of the Law on Suppression of Human Trafficking and Sexual Exploitation, which carries a prison sentence of two to five years.
“We received a complaint from the child’s grandmother that she lost a child,” Vanny said, explaining the suspect had taken the child on Friday and was arrested on Sunday in Phnom Penh’s Steung Meanchey. The child was brought back to the grandmother.
“If we did not take action early, we don’t know where the child would be now,” she said, adding that the suspect must have had “bad intentions” but that it was unclear if she had planned to take the child abroad.
