The “unidentified gunmen,” who abducted two brothers from the capital’s Darussalam area on Friday, did everything that law enforcers would normally do during a raid to arrest criminals.
In the early hours on Friday, they seized mobile phones from some rickshaw pullers and security guards, who were drinking tea nearby, cleared an alley that led to the house of the two brothers, before eventually abducting Omar Faruk, 32, and Firoz, 27, both book traders by profession.
Witnesses said 10-12 men, equipped with firearms and walkie-talkies, appeared on white microbus around 2:15am in the Bholartek area. They parked the microbus at the mouth of an alley.
“They showed us guns and asked where Faruk and Firoz lived. They frisked the seven people who were at the tea stall at that time and found three mobile phones. They seized the phones and ordered everyone to not leave the place until they told us to,” a witness said.
“We know Faruk and Firoz since the time they rented two apartments here seven years ago. Faruk lives with his parents, wife and two sons on the ground floor of a two-storey building. Firoz lives on the ground floor of a three-storey building with his wife and two kids. Both buildings are owned by the same person and the buildings are surrounding by a common wall,” the witness said.
After seizing the mobile phones, the armed men then climbed over the wall to enter the compound of the building.
“After about half an hour, they came out of the compound with the two siblings and walked them to the white microbus. Before leaving the area, they gave back the mobile phones they had seized from the security guards and the rickshaw pullers,” he said.
Hakim Ali, father of Faruk and Firoz, described what had happened that night while talking to the Dhaka Tribune.
He said: “They first knocked on Firoz’s door. When his wife opened the door, four to five men stormed in, went to Firoz’s room and dragged him out.
“Then they started looking for Faruk. When they knocked at our door, I opened it came out. They asked me where Faruk was. Faruk then came out and they asked him where he had kept his mobile phone. Then they took Faruk away and his wife Sonia’s mobile phone,” he narrated.
When Hakim asked their identity and why they had come, they replied: “Old man, you will know about it later.”
The two brothers have been running a bookshop named Nobojatra Library in the city’s Nilkhet area for six-seven years. Their father claimed that his sons were not involved in politics or any criminal activities.
“My sons go to work every morning and return by 11pm. They even do not attend any political rallies or programmes,” he claimed. When contacted, Officer-in-Charge of the Darussalam police station Rafiqul Islam said they were yet to know who had picked them up.
“First we have to know whether they are from the Detective Branch [DB] or whether they are any criminals. We have been looking for the siblings,” he said.
He also said the brothers did not have any criminal records with the police station.
The Darussalam police station is just 200 yards from the victims’ house, but law enforcers from that station claimed that they had not sensed anything that night.
On Friday morning, a few hours after the incident, victims’ father Hakim went to the head office of the Dhaka Metropolitan Police’s Detective Branch (DB) in the capital’s Minto Road.
Then he went to the office of the local RAB unit and the Darussalam police station. But none of them could give him any clue about his sons’ whereabouts.
The DB office advised Hakim to file a general diary with the local police station.
When contacted, Saiful Islam, an additional deputy commissioner of DB, told the Dhaka Tribune on Saturday that no DB teams had been involved with the incident.
He also said police had been trying to trace the brothers.
