News Desk :
Although his family agreed to pay Tk 10 lakh as ransom, the human traffickers did not spare Rakibul as he was killed along with 25 other Bangladeshis in Libya on Thursday.
A pall of gloom descended on the house of Rakibul at Khatbaria village in Shangkarpur union of Jhikargachha upazila in Jashore district as his family members received the news of his brutal murder. His bereaved mother Mahirun Nesha has fainted repeatedly while crying.
Rakibul Islam alias Rocky, son of Ismail Hossain of the village, is one of the 26 ill-fated Bangladeshis who were killed in a gun attack in Libya.
Barely at the age 20, Rakibul went to Libya on February 15 to support his family and change their financial condition, said his elder brother Sohel Rana.
After reaching Bengazi, he managed a job in an oil company and worked there for two months.
He then gave Tk 70,000 to Bangladeshi human trafficker Abdullah to go to Libya’s capital Tripoli as one of his cousins stays there. He started his journey for Tripoli on May 15.
But a gang human trafficker comprising some Bangladeshis abducted Rakibul and several his fellow countrymen in Mizda, 180-km off Tripoli.
The gang demanded $12,000 or Tk 10 lakh as ransom in May 18 over phone from Sohel.
As Sohel agreed to pay the ransom, the traffickers asked him to send the money to Dubai.
Sohel wanted to pay the money in Bangladesh, but the abductors turned down his proposal and mounted pressure on him to send money to Dubai, he said.
He said he assured the gang to send the money to Dubai on June 1. But 26 Bangladesh citizens, including Rakibul, were killed while 12 others injured in a gun attack allegedly by some human traffickers on Thursday.
Rakibul’s family wants the government to bring the body of him so that they can at least see his face for the last time and bury him at their family graveyard.
