Abducted child found dead

A day after her kidnapping, a five-year-old girl was found dead at Araihazar in Narayanganj yesterday.

An alleged kidnapper, Fazle Rabbi, 15, was detained in police raid hours before the murder.

Police and locals said Hafsa Akhter Rupa, daughter of Hazrat Ali, a Bangladeshi expatriate in Malaysia, went missing when she was playing near her home in Banti Chowdhuripara area on Thursday noon.

Later in the afternoon, some kidnappers called a local flexi-load shop and asked its owner to tell Hafsa's parents that they would kill her if they were not paid Tk 3 lakh as ransom immediately.

On being informed, police launched drives in several places of the upazila and detained Fazle that night. But, Hafsa, a first grader at Girda Nazrul Islam Babu Primary School, was still traceless. 

The next morning, her body was recovered beside a road in Girda. Police recovered it and sent it to Narayanganj General Hospital morgue for autopsy.

Sajeda Begum, the victim's grandmother, said the kidnappers had threatened them that they would kill Hafsa if police were informed about the abduction.

Shell shocked, Hafsa's mother Lipi Akhtar demanded the killers be hanged.

Mohammad Shakhawat Hossain, officer-in-charge of Araihazar Police Station, said they arrested the alleged kidnapper using mobile technologies, and that a total of five to six people could be behind the crime.

”We are trying to arrest the killers,” he said.