Five Years On: Cops searching; Ilias still missing
Every month since May 2012, the capital's Banani Police Station has been submitting a report to the High Court, stating that it is still trying to know the whereabouts of missing BNP leader M Ilias Ali.
The police station also conducts “search operations” in different parts of the country almost every month to trace Ilias, officials say.
“We carried out such a drive last month as well but could not find him,” Officer-in-Charge BM Forman Ali of the police station told The Daily Star yesterday.
“What else can we do?” he asked.
However, the family members are not satisfied at all.
Expressing deep frustration over the way probe is being conducted, Ilias' wife Tahsina Rushdir said law enforcers contacted the family only during the first one or two months after her husband's going missing.
“After that,” she said, “none from law enforcement agencies contacted us or informed us about the progress.”
Rushdir said: “It is the state's responsibility to ensure security of all the citizens.
My husband was a former lawmaker. It is the government's duty to find him.”
Ilias, the then organising secretary of the BNP, went missing along with his driver in the wee hours of April 18, 2012. His car was found abandoned in Banani with all its four doors wide open.
“The government or the law enforcement agencies might have thought that we have forgotten him as years passed by. But memory of Ilias Ali haunts me and my children every night,” a weeping Rushdir said over the mobile phone yesterday.
After a brief pause, she added: “The word joy has deserted the lives of my three children. The two Eids, Pahela Baishakh or their birthdays -- nothing makes any difference now.”
Her two sons are now in the UK for study and only daughter, a seventh grader, is with her in Dhaka.
Pointing to Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina's assurance in 2012 that Ilias would be traced, Rushdir said she didn't see any initiative on the part of the PM in this regard.
In an emotion-choked voice, Rushdir said the lack of initiative on the part of the PM disappointed the family so much. They thought that at least Sheikh Hasina would feel their pain as she lost almost all her family members and relatives in a tragic incident.
“We still appeal to the PM to take initiative for finding out Ilias Ali. We desperately want him back.”
After Ilias went missing, Rushdir claimed several times that her husband was a victim of political enmity.
Quoting Ilias, Rushdir on a number of occasions told reporters that intelligence agencies had prepared a list of opposition leaders who were vocal against the government on some international issues. Ilias told her that he was on the list.
Five law enforcement agencies, including police and Rab, in May 2012 had submitted reports to the HC as ordered by the court, claiming Ilias is not in their custody since they have not picked him up or detained him.
Following a writ petition filed by Rushdir on April 19 that year, the HC issued a rule upon the law enforcement agencies to explain within 10 days why they should not be directed to produce Ilias before it or prove that he was not detained by them.
Petitioner's counsel M Mahbub Uddin Khokon yesterday told The Daily Star that they believe Ilias Ali still remains under the custody of law enforcement agencies.
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