Abductors on the prowl

Bogra Sangbad Desk : Rights bodies find law enforcers' link to many incidents; law enforcers blame criminals in guise of police in most cases.

On the morning of July 12, all the hustle and bustle of the busy Eid market at the capital's Science Laboratory intersection came to a standstill, at least for a few minutes. Five armed men jumped out of a white microbus and forced two men into the vehicle. It was around 10:30.

The victims -- two brothers, as it later transpired -- shouted for help from inside the vehicle with black glass, but none of the several hundred eyewitnesses dared to approach the microbus.

“During the raid, they [the kidnappers] identified themselves as detectives,” said Mizanur Rahman, one witness.

They all had walkie-talkies in their hands, pistols in their holsters and handcuffs hanging from their waists. So to the onlookers, the raiders looked like genuine law enforcers, except that they were not.   

The next day, real detectives arrested three of the abductors and recovered Tk 50,000 of the 20.5 lakh they had snatched from the victims, one of them a money exchanger.

Luckily for their families, the two brothers returned home. But many never have.

Police record shows 920 people were kidnapped last year. Some of them were rescued by law enforcers while some were freed by their abductors. There is no knowing of the fate of the other victims.

And yet all abductions are not acts of criminals. Rights body Ain o Salish Kendra (ASK) said as many as 29 people fell victim to abduction by law enforcers between January and June this year.

In a recent report, the ASK said bodies of four of them were recovered; one was released later and another was shown arrested. The 23 others just vanished as if they never existed.

In public, law enforcers usually deny that they abduct people. But off the record, one police official told The Daily Star that they had a hand in a “very small number” of abductions.

“Sometimes it's for politics and sometimes for money,” he said, requesting anonymity, given the gravity of the matter.

Due to the professional or political identities of these victims, their abductions draw much attention and get widespread media coverage, the official added.

Monirul Islam, joint commissioner of Dhaka Metropolitan Police, went a step further.

“In the past, we have seen that members of some agencies, identifying themselves as detectives, picked up some accused persons and later showed them arrested,” he told a press conference on July 13, the day cops arrested the three fake detectives in connection with the two brothers' abduction.

In the past six months alone, police arrested about 100 such bogus detectives, Monirul added.

Criminologists and rights activists say that with allegations of abduction against law enforcers rising, criminals are impersonating law enforcers to take advantage of the situation.

“We investigated 20 to 25 percent of all the incidents of abduction [this year]. All our facts point to law enforcers. So, it suggests that law enforcers are involved in all the 29 cases we reported,” ASK Director Noor Khan Liton told this correspondent yesterday.

At times, law enforcers in the guise of criminals abduct their targets while real criminals kidnap people posing as cops, he said, adding that the tactic served their purpose well.

Azizur Rahman, associate professor of criminology and police science at Mawlana Bhashani Science and Technology University, said although a section of law enforcers were abducting people, the criminal justice system were failing to bring them to book.

“They are enjoying impunity thanks to their power and political clout,” he said.

This culture of impunity encourages criminals, who also continue to prey on their targets, he added.

In the meantime, the victims' families suffer.

Tahmina Aktar has been waiting for the last one month for her husband to come home. 

Fazlul Haque Rahim, a real estate businessman, was kidnapped from the capital's Mirpur on June 25 for a second time in four months.

Tahmina is convinced law enforcers have a hand in this. Fazlul was supposed to testify before a police committee on June 29 in connection with his February 28 abduction allegedly by plainclothes cops, including Sub-inspectors Abdul Alim and Nazrul Islam.

After his first abduction, Fazlul was shown arrested in an arson case, said Tahmina, a mother of two kids.

Back then, she had to pay some cops Tk 10 lakh as they allegedly threatened to kill her husband in the name of “crossfire”. Police also allegedly did not return Fazlul's SUV -- a Toyota Land Cruiser Prado (Dhaka Metro Gha -11-1610).

The police headquarters is now investigating Fazlul's disappearance. But contacted yesterday, Alamgir Alam, an additional DIG (discipline), said he had no updates on the inquiry.

“I tried my best to trace my husband in vain. Now I've resigned to my fate. What else can I do?” she told this newspaper on Wednesday. 

Source : The Daily Star