Staff Reporter :
A case which was filed in connection with the alleged abduction of columnist and writer Farhad Mazhar was handed over to Detective Branch (DB) of police on Tuesday night.
The DB will now investigate the case, said Masudur Rahman, Deputy Commissioner (Media) of Dhaka Metropolitan Police.
Mazhar, who is known to be a staunch critic of the government and a rights activist, mysteriously disappeared from home at city’s Shyamoli on Monday.
He was rescued from a Dhaka-bound bus in Jessore later at night of the day. Mazhar’s wife Farida Akhter lodged a complaint with Adabar Police Station in the capital on Monday. Police documented the complaint as a case the next day.
His family claimed he was abducted. Following the allegation, police started a search and found him on a bus heading back to Dhaka from Jessore the same night.
The bus was stopped at Jessore’s Nayapara when both RAB and police found the poet sitting in the bus.
In the case, the columnist’s wife Farida Akhter said that Mazhar called her from his phone at 5:29am and quoted her husband as saying: “They are taking me away, they will kill me.”
She received four more calls from Mazhar throughout the day when he told her to manage Tk 35 lakh as ransom. At the DB headquarters, Mazhar said when he went out early in the morning to buy medicines, a group of people forced him into a waiting microbus.
Police also claimed there was no sign of abduction.
