A mystery surrounding the week-long disappearance of a Vietnamese beauty queen has deepened after she apparently resurfaced after allegedly having been kidnapped by the well-connected, lovestruck son of a senior police officer.

Miss Vietnam 2002, Pham Thi Mai Phuong, 18, is seen after she won the reinstated national beauty contest in Ho Chi Minh City in September 2002.  [Reuters]

Pham Thi Mai Phuong, who was crowned Miss Vietnam in September last year, disappeared on August 5 in the northeastern port city of Haiphong while heading home after attending an English class at a language school.

However, in circumstances that remain far from clear, the 18-year-old was reunited with her family on Wednesday evening, according to her younger brother, Pham Anh Huy.

"My sister is now at the house of my grandmother and my parents are with her there," he told AFP. Asked if Phuong had been kidnapped, he said: "It is difficult to say because it concerns many people."

Further deepening the mystery is a denial by Phuong's father, Pham Thanh Hung, over his wife's comments on Tuesday that a group of unidentified men had surrounded their house in the early hours of that morning and threatened to kill him.

"No, no, no, maybe my wife was afraid of something, maybe she missed our daughter very much," he told Radio Free Asia's (RFA) Vietnamese service on Wednesday. "Nothing, nothing happened."

RFA on Monday, citing a close family source who requested anonymity, said Phuong was kidnapped by a friend, Nguyen Binh Khanh, who did not want her to leave Vietnam for Britain where she had been awarded a scholarship by Luton University.

Pham Thi Mai Phuong, smiles for the press as she stands with her grandmother(L) and her mother after being crowned 'Miss Vietnam' 2002 in Ho Chi Minh City in this Sept. 22, 2002 file photo.  [AP]

Apparently, Khanh, a police officer and son of Haiphong City Police Chief Nguyen Binh Doan, threatened to kill Phuong and then himself if she tried to leave the country, the US-government funded network said.

On Tuesday, the state-run Tien Phong newspaper, reporting from Haiphong, said Phuong was stopped by a group of men who bundled her into a car and drove off. It also said the son of a high-ranking police officer was involved in the case, but did not name Khanh.

The official press Thursday reported Phuong's return home quoting a letter, purportedly written by her and sent to Haiphong city newspapers, in which she denied she had been kidnapped and said she was travelling with friends.

However, many newspapers cast doubts on this version of events, with the Quan Doi Nhan Dan, the military mouthpiece, saying many "absurd and intolerable" details remained unanswered.

Police in Haiphong, which is considered one of the country's most crime-ridden cities, where corruption is rife, refused to release any details on the case.

Two days after Phuong's disappearance, her father Hung sent a letter to Doan, the city police chief, and to the Ministry of Public Security saying his family were living in fear over their daughter's fate.

On the same day, Doan telephoned Hung and told him not to circulate the letter because he would be able to find Phuong, Hung told the Tien Phong in comments published Thursday.

Miss Vietnam, however, did not return immediatelly and so Hung also sent another appeal to Prime Minister Phan Van Khai, his deputy Nguyen Tan Dung, and Minister of Public Security Le Hong Anh.

Phuong was awarded a scholarship worth over 56,000 US dollars to study for a degree in business management at Luton University, just north of London. She is supposed to start her classes on September 15.

She told reporters late last month she was honored to be able to attend a university abroad but would return to Vietnam after graduation.

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