Any land-related case your wife filed?
Abu Bakar Siddique was not the first person to have been confined to that house.
“Some other people were also brought and kept there. A few of them were killed and others were released,” Siddique, businessman and husband of environment lawyer Syeda Rizwana Hasan, told The Daily Star yesterday, quoting a person who stood guard at the house.
The house was on a high ground, possibly in Gazipur, as the abductors' vehicle reached there travelling a steep road. And it was not a solitary place, as horns of vehicles and Azaan from a mosque nearby could be heard, said Siddique who was freed by the kidnappers on Thursday night, about 33 hours after the abduction.
At least three persons -- two inside the house and another outside it -- were on guard, said Siddique who had heard three voices.
Two of them told him that they had been working there for six months.
At one point of conversation, one of them asked him whether his wife had filed any case against anyone over land-related issues, he said.
Except for the three, no other people were at the house. All the food including rice, curry, banana and buns that the abductors fed him was bought from restaurants, he said.
Siddique was kidnapped at gunpoint on Dhaka-Narayanganj link road around 2:40pm on Wednesday. And it all happened in two to three minutes.
The abductors blindfolded him and shoved him into a microbus. They warned him not to make any noise.
The vehicle travelled for an hour or more before it got onto a ferry. “They changed the vehicle before boarding the second ferry,” he said.
On the way, they didn't ask him anything. But he heard them discussing the amount of ransom -- from Tk 4 lakh to Tk 1 crore -- for his release.
The vehicle didn't stay on highways all the time.
“Sometimes, it ran smoothly on highways. And at times, it travelled battered roads,” he said.
The vehicle reached the house before Maghrib prayers.
“They took me inside the house and put a rope around my neck. Then I felt something, probably the barrel of a revolver, pushed against my abdomen. They warned me not to scream or make noise if I wanted to stay alive. But they did not torture me. I was blindfolded the whole time,” he said.
Siddique said the gang leader arrived at the house after a few hours. And the persons on guard there addressed him as “bhai”.
“Bhai stayed there for only five minutes.”
“It seems you are quite a famous person. You have created so much stir in the media. We might get a ransom of Tk 10 crore from your family. We have not yet decided what to do with you. We will either shoot you or release you,” said Siddique, quoting the gang leader.
“Bhai” asked Siddique his name and also enquired about his profession, apparently trying to give an impression that the gang leader didn't know much about him.
“I told him to let me talk to my family if they wanted money. But he did not allow it. He also didn't ask for any phone number.”
“They did not misbehave with me. He [bhai] asked his people to buy me medicine for high blood pressure,” said Siddique.
He had to lie on the floor the whole night.
They gave me a bun and a banana for breakfast the next morning, said Siddique.
“After breakfast, I started talking to them to know their intentions.”
The two persons on guard told him that possibly the abductors would not kill him.
But they mentioned that some of the abductees had been killed there, said Siddique.
“I asked the two why they were doing such work. They said they did it only for money,” he said.
Asked how he kept track of time, Siddique said he needed to take medicine after the Esha prayers the second day. When he wanted to know the time from one of the two on guard there, the person told him that it was 9:20pm.
The gang leader arrived there after a while and told Siddique that police and Rab members had got very active.
“It is not safe to keep you here anymore. It is not wise to kill you as your dead body will not fetch me money. I better release you. May be I will able to get money from you later,” said Siddique, quoting the gang leader.
Later, he was put inside a car. The gang leader himself drove it for around an hour. He then stopped near the Ansar camp in Mirpur, gave Siddique Tk 300 and then released him around 11:20 pm on Thursday.
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