Deputy Home Minister Ismail Mohamed Said told MPs that Malaysian police were working with authorities in a neighbouring country to identify his location.

He said Riduan was believed to be constantly moving from one place to another.

Riduan is the former husband of Ipoh kindergarten teacher M Indira Gandhi who won a court order that he return their daughter Prasana Diksa to her, after a legal battle over the unilateral conversion of their children to Islam by Riduan after he had converted.

Ismail told the Dewan Rakyat that “the police will take legal action (against him) based on the existing provisions if the subject (Muhammad Riduan) returns to this country”.

He said this in a debate on a motion regarding the status and development of the Indira Gandhi case, brought by Charles Santiago (PH-Klang). The motion was laid before the Dewan Rakyat’s Special Chambers today.

He said the police had made inspections of all the addresses on record for where he had lived before. “Various other efforts were made to trace the subject, including working with the neighbouring country’s authorities to trace the actual location of the subject,” he said.

He said the efforts would continue until Riduan and his daughter were found. Riduan had also been declared as a wanted person, and blacklisted by the Immigration Department, Ismail said.

Riduan fled with his daughter in 2009 when she was only 11 months old, after he converted to Islam and no longer used his birth name, K. Pathmanathan.

In 2016, the Federal Court ordered the Inspector-General of Police (then Khalid Abu Bakar) to arrest Riduan and comply with the mandamus order issued by the Ipoh High Court two years earlier to retrieve Prasana Diksa.

In January 2018, the court also overturned the conversion of Prasana and her two older siblings to Islam.