THE mother of missing Mikaeel Kular lost a friend last year in an alleged shooting incident.
Rosdeep Kular, 33, posted a picture of herself with Mohammed Abdi the day after he died in the Willowbrae area of Edinburgh last April.
Neighbours say they had seen Mr Abdi, who was 25 when he died, coming and going from Ms Kular's flat and that he had been a regular visitor to her home in the Drylaw area of the capital.
One neighbour, who asked not to be named, said: "It has been a long time since I last saw him, but I have definitely seen him with the mum.
"I don't know if he was her boyfriend or anything, because there was always a lot of people coming and going, but I have definitely seen him over there."
Another said: "I saw him a couple of times but more with the kids than with the mum. I'm sure that he took the little ones to nursery too."
Mr Abdi, whose father was an Imam at the Edinburgh Central Mosque, died on April 26 last year.
Six men deny killing Mr Abdi. Mohamud Mohamud, 30, Ahmed Ahmed, 28, Cadil Huseen, 22, Hussein Ali, 26, Liban Ahmed, 29, and Said Fadal, 32, appeared at the High Court in Glasgow over the alleged shooting earlier this month.
Mr Abdi was allegedly shot with a sub-machine pistol and a revolver.
Ms Kular, who has four other children, works as a beauty therapist.
Her family originate from India.
She has sons Tarun, nine, David, seven, and daughter Renuka, five, with her Nigerian ex-husband Omotoso Adekunle Adekoya, 35, who she married in Glenrothes, Fife, in 2004.
But she split up from her husband, a taxi driver, and found a new boyfriend.
She later gave birth to Mikaeel and twin sister Ashika in 2010.
A former neighbour of Ms Kular, Patricia Kilpatrick, 72, is reported to have said: "She wasn't with her husband anymore.
"I remember there being a problem one day with her husband who had come to take the kids on a Sunday but he couldn't get them from inside the house.
"He used to come and take them away for the day, I think to his house, but not all of them, just his kids.
"He had come on the Sunday to pick them up but I think he realised that they were alone in the house and soon after that the police arrived to sort everything out.
"He was a taxi driver and he would always arrive in a taxi and take them away in it."
Mr Adekoya lives at a flat in Waterfront Gait in Edinburgh, just five minutes' walk from Ms Kular and her children.
Just before midday on Thursday, 20 police officers raided a property in his street and made an arrest but officers later said that the raid was an unrelated operation.
Mikaeel's grandmother, retired doctor Harjinder Kular, joined the rest of the family in Edinburgh as the search continued.
Harjinder's neighbour April Mullen met Mikaeel and his siblings many times when they came to her garden to see her fish pond.
She said he was "quiet and sweet-natured, just like his brothers and sisters".
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article