Boy found dead 8 days after kidnap

Police recovered the decomposing body of a 14-year-old boy from under a sand mound at Yakubdandi village of Patiya upazila in Chittagong early yesterday, eight days after he had been abducted.
Deceased Ashraful Alam Opu, son of pharmacy owner Md Idris of South Hulain village under Habilash Dwip union of the upazila, was a student of class-VIII at Patiya Model High School.
Police have so far arrested two neighbours of Opu -- Sagor, 19, and Sajjad, 20 -- in connection with the abduction and killing.
Law enforcers said they on information from a villager recovered the body around 2:00am and that they suspected the villager might have link with the kidnap and murder.
Sub-Inspector Abdul Hamid of Patiya police, also the investigation officer of the case, said looking at the body it seemed that the boy had been killed a day after his abduction.
Police had sent the body to Chittagong Medical College morgue for an autopsy, he added.
Opu's brother-in-law Isa Khan said Opu had gone missing on January 19 while going to a friend's family programme. The next morning Opu's mother received a phone call in which the caller demanded Tk 1 crore as ransom for Opu's safe return. The caller had also warned her not to go to the police.
That night the boy's father had filed a general diary with Patiya police in connection with Opu's disappearance, said Isa Khan.
On January 25, the abductors called and this time they brought down the ransom amount to Tk 20 lakh. Opu's father that night filed an abduction case, which led to the arrest of neighbours Sagor and Sajjad.
Police said the duo during interrogation had admitted that they along with five others abducted Opu, but they handed him over to one Sohel, 30, and did not know what happened next.
On the morning of January 26, the abductors called Opu's mother again and demanded Tk 10 lakh. They asked her to go alone to the city's Anwara intersection at 8:30pm with the money.
But on reaching there, Opu's mother found no one. She tried to contact the callers but all the numbers the abductors had used were switched off. After waiting there for more than two hours, she came home around 11:00pm. Three hours later the family learnt that Opu's body had been found.
Opu was the third among four children of the family. The elder two daughters are married, while the youngest son studies in class-III.