Weekend Argus (Saturday Edition)
Missing girl: 10 years later and no closure
“I PRAY that you are safe and happy. I pray that you come home to your family and friends.”
These are words in some of the letters written to the mother of then5-year-old Kauthar Bobbs on the 10th anniversary of her disappearance.
The Tafelsig sub-forum, together with the SAPS and the Mitchells Plain Crisis Forum, hosted a memorial service on Sunday.
Kauthar vanished on October 12, 2012, while playing in a park in Tafelsig.
Candles and a photograph of Kauthar were placed on a table where several community members, police and the little girl’s mother, Lamees Bobbs and grandmother, Nazley Bobbs, gathered in the streets where she once had played.
Hope has since disappeared for Bobbs, who said she had received no communication from police for years about the case.
Lamees also has a 12- year- old daughter, Aqeelah, who was only 2 years old when her sister vanished.
Police deem Kauthar’s a cold case without any leads or information.
Lamees told that over the past decade, there had been a lot of false hope, especially from people she had trusted in the community.
Inside her home, poverty is evident. The family are living from hand to mouth and keep their dog inside for safety.
A large photograph stands on the fridge.
“The Tafelsig forum gave our family a book where letters were written to Kauthar,” she said.
In 2012, the Bobbs family were the police’s prime suspects.
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Kauthar
They were questioned and interrogated by police due to their drug and gang affiliation.
Nazley had previously been arrested on drug- related charges, while her uncle, Yaseen Bobbs, who was a Rude Boy gangster, was murdered in 2014.
spoke to Henry Arends of the Mitchells Plain Crisis Forum, who is also the uncle of 11- year- old Stacha Arendse of Tafelsig, who was raped and murdered by her neighbour Randy Tango in 2017. Tango was sentenced to three life terms.
Arends said: “We were invited by the Tafelsig sub-forum to attend the Kauthar Bobbs memorial.
“We feel that we need resources and that the police must open a cold case unit to investigate these cases because it has been 10 years since she has been missing.
“We are wanting to support parents who are in situations like this, where they do not know where their children are. Is their child safe? Is their child eating? Where they are and where they are sleeping? Who has them and what has happened to them? There is no closure, and they cannot bury their children.”
Police spokesperson Sergeant Wesley Twigg said the case had no fresh leads. “The circumstances surrounding her disappearance are conducted by Mitchells Plain Family Violence, Child Protection and Sexual Offences unit.
“The investigation continues.”