A two-week-old baby girl, Owami Lonathando Sindane, has been safely reunited with her mother after being kidnapped on Sunday afternoon, triggering a dramatic overnight search operation by Reaction Unit South Africa (RUSA). The rescue took place on Monday morning, 6 May, near the Pavilion Shopping Centre in Westville, KwaZulu-Natal.
The ordeal began when Owami’s mother, Bongiwe Sindane, befriended a 21-year-old woman at a local clinic in Cato Manor. Unknown to her, the woman had recently suffered a miscarriage on 24 April and had secretly devised a plan to abduct a child to convince her boyfriend that she had successfully delivered a baby.
RUSA spokesperson, Prem Balram said: “On Sunday at around 3pm, the woman visited Bongiwe’s home and kidnapped baby Owami. The mother reported the incident to the RUSA operations centre at 10pm that night. Reaction Officers immediately launched a search operation, circulating details of the missing infant. Over the next 11 hours, the operations centre received 34 tip-offs from the public—ranging from KwaZulu-Natal to Limpopo, Cape Town, and Johannesburg—with reports of women returning home with newborn babies under suspicious circumstances.”
Balram added that in the early hours of Monday morning, RUSA officers narrowed their focus to the Chesterville area, located between Cato Manor and Westville, suspecting the woman was preparing to flee the province.
“ Reaction officers and the RUSA helicopter team launched a coordinated operation, blocking all entry and exit points while searching from the air based on vague location data.
“At approximately 09:15am, officers spotted a woman acting suspiciously with a newborn baby near the Pavilion Shopping Centre. Surveillance confirmed she matched the suspect’s description, and she was swiftly apprehended. The baby was positively identified as Owami Lonathando Sindane.”
Balram said that during the questioning, the woman confessed to the kidnapping.
“She admitted to faking a pregnancy and abducting the baby to deceive her boyfriend. After taking the child, she travelled to Chesterville and told her partner that she had given birth to a healthy baby girl. The boyfriend, unaware of the abduction, arrived on the scene during the arrest and, upon learning the truth, immediately ended the relationship and left.”
Further concerns were that the woman revealed she had been feeding the baby only water, having not bought any infant formula.
“The woman was taken into police custody at the FCS unit in Cato Manor, where Bongiwe Sindane positively identified her as the kidnapper. Due to threats from an angry mob, the suspect had to be removed from the area under police protection,” Balram concluded.
