Sharishabari mayor still 'traumatised'
Sharishabari Municipality Mayor Rokonuzzaman Rokon, who was found in a tea estate in Sreemangal on Wednesday two days after he had gone missing, is still traumatised and weak, says his family.
“He cannot speak properly as he is sick. We will talk to the media after his recovery,” the mayor's elder brother Saiful Islam Tukan told The Daily Star yesterday.
The 42-year-old politician, also the vice-president of Sharishabari upazila Awami League in Jamalpur, was shifted to United Hospital in the capital around 3:00pm yesterday soon after police gave the mayor in his family's custody.
Earlier around 10:00am, a team of the Detective Branch of Dhaka Metropolitan Police admitted Rokon to Dhaka Medical College Hospital for check-up. The mayor was interrogated by detectives on Wednesday night, said DB sources.
Shafiqul Islam, additional deputy commissioner of DB, said Rokon could not cooperate with the DB team during interrogation due to illness.
Quoting the mayor, his wife Kamrunnahar Happy said some five to six unidentified men picked up her husband in a black microbus around 9:25am on Monday when he went out for a walk in a park in Uttara's Sector-13 near his rented apartment.
“They [criminals] blindfolded my husband and later made him unconscious with sedatives. He could not identify anyone,” she told The Daily Star.
Kamrunnahar said they were still in the dark about the “abductors”.
According to Saiful, the family informed law enforcers about Rokon's enmity with a youth and a contractor from Sharishabari. A general diary was filed with Sharishabari Police Station in this regard about two weeks ago.
Asked whether they would file an abduction case, Saiful said they were yet to make a decision in this regard.
“We will wait for the police probe report and recovery of my brother.”
Jahurul Islam Manik, a neighbour of the mayor and also a Jamalpur AL leader, said Rokon maintains close relations with the local people.
“But I have no idea about his business, friends and other activities in Dhaka,” he added.
The mayor's family suspected Rokon might have been abducted to frighten him.
He had been an expatriate in Italy and was a BNP activist. He joined the ruling AL in 2014 and was elected municipality mayor the next year.
According to his nephew Mahbubur Rahman, Rokon used to visit Sharishabari every Friday to see his wife and two children. He would return to the capital on every Sunday night.
In Uttara, he used to live with Mahbubur, a bodyguard, and a driver.
Our Jamalpur correspondent contributed to this report.
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