11 return after paying ransom
Aleya Begum could hardly sleep in the last five months. She could not even respond to her little granddaughter's query: “Where is my father? When will he come home?”
Waiting for all these months, Aleya's mind was oscillating between hope and despair whether her son Shafiul Alam would return home alive from the grasp of traffickers or not.
Finally, Shafiul came back home yesterday, bringing smile to the faces of his mother and three-and-a-half-year-old daughter.
“Getting my son back is the best ever gift I have received in my life,” said Aleya with blissful eyes.
Like 33-year-old Shafiul of Khulna, 11 other Bangladeshi migrants landed at Shahjalal International Airport at 10:35am after enduring inhuman torture in Iran for months. Rights Jessore, an NGO, with the help of the Bangladesh embassy in Tehran arranged their repatriation.
The eleven others are Mahfuzur Rahman, Forhad Hossain, Mehedi Hasan, Montaz, Shafiqul Alam, Sajib Chandra Nath, Jakir Hossain, Muslim Uddin, Firoz Miah, Jasim Miah and Aminur Rahman. From the airport, the expatriates were taken to the CID office in the capital.
The migrants were abducted last year by a gang of Bangladeshi human traffickers based in Iran. The gang persuaded the migrants in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Oman to cross into Iran and have lucrative jobs in Turkey, Greece, and Italy with huge salaries.
The victims were held hostage in Iran's port city Bandar Abbas. The gang collected ransoms from 11 migrants while the other was subjected to forced labour.
Shafiul, who worked in the UAE as a diploma engineer, was lured by the traffickers into coming to Iran for a job in Turkey with a monthly salary of Tk 1.20 lakh.
“One of my friends Amin, who also worked in my company, came up with the offer. He introduced me to Nanu Miah in Iran, who would send me to Turkey,” said Shafiul.
On December 28 last year, he along with six other migrants had reached Bandar Abbas through the Arabian Sea. Nanu then took the seven to a building and held them hostage there.
“Nanu and his cohorts beat us up and asked us to call home for ransom,” said Shafiul. Fearing further torture, he gave his mother's phone number to Nanu and requested his family members to send money.
Talking to The Daily Star at the office of Criminal Investigation Department (CID), Aleya said Nanu had threatened her over the phone that her son would be chopped into pieces if she failed to pay him a ransom of Tk 6 lakh within four days.
Failing to manage the amount within the stipulated time, she requested Nanu to extend the deadline.
“I begged for my son's life and pledged to pay the money by the next 15 days, but Nanu would not agree. He gave me the b-Kash account number of one of his local agents in Sunamganj and asked me to deposit a minimum of Tk 2 lakh in the account by two days. Later I deposited the money in the account,” she added.
Bangladeshi Nanu has been in Iran for the last 30 years. A ring leader of the trafficking gang, he was arrested on March 20 in Bandar Abbas by Iranian police and is now behind bars. Shafiul was rescued by cops on that day.
However, the 11 others and 50 more Bangladeshi migrants were rescued by Iranian police in the last two months.
The rest 50 will return home by this month, Binoy Krishna Mallick, executive director of Rights Jessore, told this newspaper.
Speaking at a press conference at the CID office yesterday afternoon, Shah Alam, additional DIG of CID, said they have started working with the Iranian police to rescue Bangladeshi migrants from the trafficking gangs.
The traffickers in Iran took about Tk 120 crore in ransom from abducted Bangladeshi migrants over the last two years, he said.
The law enforcers are also working to find out whether there are any agents of the gangs in Bangladesh and Iran.
The Bangladesh embassy in Iran on April 6 sent a letter to the senior secretary of the home ministry asking it to take stringent action against trafficking gangs at home and abroad, said the CID official.
According to the letter, around 2,000 Bangladeshis, who were either abducted or subjected to forced labour by traffickers in the Middle Eastern countries, were repatriated in the last one and a half years.
A three member CID team, said Alam, will leave Dhaka for Iran and the UAE next week to probe the abductions of migrants.
Earlier on December 22 last year, 29 Bangladeshi migrants returned home with the assistance of Rights Jessore. They were abducted in the UAE, Oman and Qatar by another Bangladeshi trafficking gang.
Comments