‘Never thought will return alive’

Abu Bakar Siddique has said he had abandoned all hopes of returning alive after his abduction.

He was abducted on Wednesday, on his way to Dhaka, and was released almost 35 hours later.

Siddique is a senior manager with a readymade garment factory owned by State Minister for Power Nasrul Hamid Bipu.

“To tell the truth, I never thought I’d come back alive,” he told reporters after deposing before a Narayanganj court on Friday.

“I still don’t feel safe,” he said.

Siddique recounted how a blue microbus rammed his car from behind on Wednesday afternoon at Fatulla’s Bhuigarh on his way to Dhaka.

“As I got off my car to check the damage, several men came down from the microbus and forced me into their vehicle,” he said.

“[In the car,] they tied my hands, legs and blindfolded me. They drove for nearly three and a half hours and then left me lying on the floor of a house.”

He said he could not see anyone as he was blindfolded.

His wife, environmental lawyer Syeda Rizwana Hasan, filed a case with Fatulla police over her husband’s abduction.

She claimed that the people who had suffered financially because of her activism were behind the crime.

“Around 10pm on Thursday, the miscreants took me out and dropped me at Mirpur’s Ansar Camp area,” Siddique said.

He later hired an autorickshaw and was on his way to his Dhanmondi residence when he ran into a police checkpost on early Friday. Police took him to Dhanmondi station after he identified himself as AB Siddique.

But the autorickshaw driver Hafizul Islam, who drove him to Kalabagan, said a man waved him down at Kaziparha in Mirpur around 1am and requested to take Siddiqui to Dhanmondi’s Central Road.

The executive director of ‘Hamid Fashions Ltd’ was taken to Narayanganj around Friday noon where he deposed for over an hour after undergoing a medical check-up.