Mumbai police have found nothing in newspaper reports, or in video of a meeting between a fake sheik and Rafiq Qureshi, to suggest he was trying to sell his daughter, Slumdog Millionaire star Rubina Ali.

There never was anything to this.

The real story should be how a shonky News Of The World journalist lured Rubina Ali’s father to a luxury hotel after telling him he was a wealthy sheik who had been moved by her story and wanted to meet her. He then offered the father money for Robina. The father declined and left.  Not interesting enough for News Of The World.

Look at the photo in the story. Robina does not look like a little girl whose family is in the middle of negotiations for her sale.

What is disturbing about this is the willingness of News Of The World readers (and apparently lots of others) to believe that ‘foreign’ parents don’t really care about their children, and are quite happy to sell them to strangers as long as the price is right.