Police have arrested two accused in a case filed over the abduction and murder of two children in Gazipur.
Law enforcement officials have already recovered the body of one child and are conducting operations with divers in the Balu river to find the other, Gazipur Metropolitan Police (GMP) Deputy Commissioner Mohammad Iltut Mish said at a news conference on Sunday afternoon.
The accused are Ali Akbar, 24, from Putia village in Vedarganj upazila of Shariatpur, and Anwar Hossain, 30, from the Dakkhin Khailkair area under Gachha police station in Gazipur. The two are cousins.
According to police, the accused abducted a three-year-old child while he was playing in front of a local garment on the Bepari Bari Mosque Road in East Kalmeshwar in Gazipur around 11am on February 20. The victim’s parents work in a local garment factory.
Hanif Ali, the victim’s father, filed a case with the police when he could not find his child. The kidnapper could not be identified through CCTV footage.
On February 23, the child’s body was recovered from the water tank of a three-storey building in the Karimullabagh area under Shampur police station.
On March 9, another two-year-old child was abducted from the Arrival Garments area on the same road at 11:30am. The kidnappers demanded a ransom of Tk5 lakh from the child's father.
A case was filed over the kidnapping with Gachha police station. Police later learned that another child had been kidnapped from the same area.
On March 17, police arrested Akbar, an active member of the kidnapping ring, using modern information technology. Based on the information provided by Akbar, his cousin Anwar was arrested from the Taragach area on March 19.
The accused have confessed to abducting and killing the two children. Based on the information provided by them, the clothes of the two children and the mobile phones used for ransom have been recovered.
They killed the second child and stuffed the body into a sack before dumping it into the Balu River, a tributary of the Turag river, from the Nimtali bridge near Pubail police station.
The abductors told police they had planned to demand ransom by showing the clothes worn by the children to their families.
GMP Assistant Deputy Commissioner (Crime-South) Hasibul Alam, Gachha Zone Assistant Commissioner Ahsanul Haque, Gachha police fficer-in-Charge (OC) Ismail Hossain were present at the press conference, among others.
