No trace yet of abducted Brac officials

Frustration grips the families of two Brac officials abducted in Ghazni province of Afghanistan on Thursday as their whereabouts are still unknown.
Six days into the abduction, Brac officials in Dhaka yesterday said neither the Afghan authorities nor their office in Afghanistan can say where Akhter Ali and Mohammad Shahjahan Ali have been kept or who are their abductors.
"Can anyone tell me what they are doing to my son? I cannot bear it anymore… Maybe they are beating up my son," Afsana Khatun Lily, Akhter's mother, broke down in tears while talking to this correspondent yesterday.
Since the abduction, the mother almost every day sits quiet holding a photograph of Akhter at her other son Ashraf Ali Palash's house in Mohammadpur.
The Brac officials' assurance of all possible efforts for their rescue brings the worrying mother little solace.
"It is already a week, and they can say nothing where the abductors have kept my son, whether they gave him any food or not," the mother lamented. She requested the media to write more vigorously so that Brac and both Bangladesh and Afghan governments take steps for her son's rescue.
Akhter's wife Shamsunnahar, who talked yesterday over phone with Aminul Alam, Brac executive director for overseas programmes, said he told her that they were trying their best.
"Saying that they are not getting any information, he asked me to pray to Allah," she added.
Shahnaz Akhter Chhobi, wife of other abduction victim Shahjahan, also called Aminul for updates to no avail.
The two families tried to contact other Brac officials in Afghanistan over the past few days in vain.
Four gunmen abducted Shahjahan and Akhter, Brac area managers posted in Ghazni, when they went to visit Moi Mobarrak branch office in Ghazni, southwest of Afghan capital Kabul.
Talking to The Daily Star, Aminul Alam said two Brac officials from the headquarters may fly for Afghanistan today or tomorrow to supervise the rescue attempts.
Despite repeated attempts over phone in the last two days, Brac's Afghanistan Country Programme Coordinator Fazlul Hoque and other officials could not be contacted.