Two Kushtia AL men missing

The president and the general secretary of Kushtia Swechchhasebak League were allegedly picked up by plain-clothes Rapid Action Battalion men from a resort in Gazipur early yesterday.

Sahida Khatun, mother of the general secretary, Sazzad Hossain Sabuj, made the allegation at a press conference at Kushtia Press Club later in the morning.

Rab, however, denied its involvement in the incident.

"We don't have any information about it,” Mufti Mahmud Khan, director of the elite force's legal and media wing, told The Daily Star last night.

Sahida said Sazzad Sabuj, Akteruzzaman Labu, president of the Swechchhasebak unit, and two activists of the Awami League-affiliated body were staying at Dream Square Resort in Gazipur.

Around 2:30am, some men in plainclothes stormed the resort, introduced themselves as Rab members and “picked up” the four from there.

Sazzad Sabuj had been missing since then, claimed Sahida.

Labu's wife Ferdous Jannat told The Daily Star that she last talked to her husband around midnight over the phone.

”Around 3:00am, I got a phone call from the resort and was told that my husband had been picked up,” she claimed.

”I called my husband immediately but someone else received the call. He disconnected the line only after asking me who I was,” Jannat said, adding that Labu's number had been switched off since then.

The identity of two Swechchhasebak League activists and what happened to them could not be known immediately.

Commander Mosaddek Ibne Mujib of Rab-12 in Kushtia said they knew nothing about the matter.

On August 15, two groups of AL supporters in the district clashed over paying tribute to Bangabandhu on the National Mourning Day, leaving Jubo League activist Sabuj Hossain dead on the spot.

Sources said Labu and Sazzad Sabuj fled the district soon after.

A case was filed with Kushtia Model Police Station against 20 Swechchhasebak League leaders and activists, including the two, on August 16.

The next day, the Kushtia district administration cancelled firearms licences of Labu and Sazzad Sabuj, said police.

Zakir Hossain, a Swechchhasebak League activist, was killed in a so-called gunfight with Kushtia police on August 19. He was reportedly close to Sazzad Sabuj.