The police today mounted an urgent nationwide search for a missing five-year-old girl who they fear could be the victim of a killer responsible for a brutal rape and murder last year.

Sharlinie Mohamad Nashar was apparently snatched on Wednesday after going to a playground with her eight-year-old sister. The child told police that the younger girl was taken by a woman who bribed her with sweets.

Her devastated parents appealed for the return of their daughter, saying they were terrified she may be in the hands of the killer of Nurin Jazlin Jazimin, an eight-year-old girl whose brutal murder shocked the country.

Nurin's battered and emaciated body, with severe internal injuries caused by sexual assault with foreign objects, was found stuffed in a sports bag last September, a month after she went missing. Her killer has not been found.

"Please give us back our daughter. Plese don't hurt her," Shalinie's mother said in a tearful appeal aired as part of blanket media coverage given to the case, adding that her daughter was asthmatic and needed medication.

Police said they have formed a special taskforce to find Sharlinie, and will scour the country and border crossings.

They released a sketch of a man who abducted a child for several hours on Monday, near where Sharlinie went missing, and said the suspect could be linked to a series of abduction cases targetting children, some of whom were molested.