Nobody knows where they are
Fourteen-year-old Nasrullah has no reply to his mother's repeated phone calls asking the whereabouts of his elder brother, who has remained missing since plainclothes men picked him up from Jatrabari two weeks ago.
“Police are trying to find out brother” is his only reply to an inconsolable Momtaz Begum, who lives in a village in Pirojpur.
“What should I say? That I have no clue? My mother has gotten ill and sometimes passes out over concern of my brother,” Nasrullah told The Daily Star yesterday.
Shafiullah, 20, a student of Dhaka College, is among the five youths who were picked up by people identifying them as detectives, from Jatrabari and Dhaka airport on September 12.
Like Momtaz, parents of the other missing youths are anxiously waiting for safe return of their children.
The families alleged that police are reluctant to find out their loved ones, and they were even denied to register a general diary to this end.
The Daily Star has contacted police officials regarding the disappearances multiple times, and each time law enforcers have denied picking them up.
Contacted yesterday, Noor-e-Azam Mia, officer-in-charge of Airport Police Station told The Daily Star that they do not have any clue yet about the three youths being picked up from the airport.
Of the missing youths, two siblings -- Shafiul Alam and Monirul Alam -- along with Monirul's friend Abul Hayat were picked up while they were receiving their hajj returnee parents at the Shahjalal International Airport.
Shafiul, president of Dhaka city (south) unit of Islami Chhatra Shibir, was later taken to his Jatrabari hostel on that night, from where Shafiullah and Mosharraf Hossain Maaz, a ninth-grader, were taken away, families alleged.
“What a country we live in! An adolescent boy has been traceless for two weeks but law enforcement agencies could not yet provide us with any update of his whereabouts,” said Maaz's uncle Haurn Or Rashid.
Maaz's parents are bedridden of worries over their youngest son.
A hapless Ramisa Khanam, mother of Shafiul and Monirul, says her two sons were dragged into a microbus and taken in front of her eyes at the airport.
“I have no one to complain to, or to seek help from. They have taken away my sons from me, and now nobody gives any clue as to where they are,” said Ramisa.
The families reiterated what they said in a press conference in the capital on September 15: that the five are either produced before court or be released.
Talking to The Daily Star about the issue, human rights activist Nur Khan Liton said, “However a person goes missing, it is the responsibility of the state and its law enforcers to find them.”
“The airport is a secure area. It is difficult for anyone other than law enforcers to pick someone up from there, bypassing the security check-posts. The five must be either rescued and returned to their families, or produced before a court,” he added.
Earlier on September 9, families of 12 students held a press conference and alleged that detectives kept their sons confined for five days since September 5.
After initially keeping their detention undisclosed, the next day police admitted the boys had been arrested by detectives on charges of spreading rumours and attacking police officials during the recent student protest for safe roads.
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