By Hasan Mahmud
Hasan Mahmud is a member of the OPC and editor of Sunday Line, a weekly newspaper in Dhaka.
The Bangladeshi capital of Dhaka has seen a rash of kidnappings over the last few months, a trend that has been climbing steadily over the last few years.
Among the missing are politicians, businessmen, journalists, poets and students.
On Sept. 25, Rokonuzzaman Rokon, the mayor of the northern city of Sharishabari, was abducted from Uttara, a suburb of Dhaka. Rukon, a leader in the Awami League political party, went missing for two days and was found more than 100 miles away in a tea garden.
On Aug. 22, Syed Sadat Ahmed, a businessman and leader of the Bangladesh Nationalist Party was forced out of his car and into a microbus with an unknown driver. There has been no trace of him so far. Also still missing is the Belarus Honorary Consul in Bangladesh, Anirudda Kumar Roy, who was last seen on Aug. 27.
On April 21, Hemonto Costa, also a businessman, was abducted while on his way to his office in the city of Savar. Costa is the younger sibling of Proshanto Costa, the high school principal in Mymensingh. His cell phone is turned off and there is no news of his whereabouts.
“We’re looking for him and praying for him,” Proshanto Costa said. “He knew many creditors because of his job, but we cannot imagine who it was.”
The number of cases of kidnapping for ransom in Bangladesh is steadily increasing. An investigation from the English-language newspaper The Daily Star found more than 330 people were kidnapped in Bangladesh between January 2013 and March 2014. Kidnappers demand ransom of between 40 thousand and 10 million taka (between $585 and $121,000).
Many do not survive.
The body of Abdul Gafur, mayor of the Nouhata municipality, was found in March at a graveyard in Dhaka.
According to his son, Faisal Ahmed Runu, Gafur went to Dhaka on Dec. 31 and stopped answering his phone Jan. 3 onward.
“Afterwards, text messages saying he was well were sent to us. My mother filed an abduction case with Poba police station on Jan. 19,” Runu said.
Police tracked the mobile phone and on Jan. 23 detained a woman claiming to be his wife. The woman and two of her sisters later confessed to the murder.
Meanwhile, police are still investigating the abduction of journalist, writer and poet Farhad Mazhar, who went missing from an area of Dhaka in July, and was rescued from a bus 125 miles away in Jessore later that day.
In July this year, Human Rights Watch released a report indicating law enforcement illegally detained at least 90 people in 2016, with hundreds more cases of secret detention since 2013. In 21 cases, the detainees were later killed. Nine others remain missing. In the first five months of 2017, 48 disappearances were reported, according to the group. HRW called for the Bangladesh government to immediately end the practice of unlawful detention and invite the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights to investigate.