‘Kill or free you, it's a loss for me ’

Abu Bakar Siddique has recounted to the media the harrowing ordeal after he spent nearly 35 hours with his captors.

Staff CorrespondentGolam Mujtaba Dhruba, bdnews24.com
Published : 18 April 2014, 08:16 PM
Updated : 18 April 2014, 08:16 PM

‘Kill or free you, it's a loss for me ’ He detailed the two days of his captivity at a news conference at his Central Road residence in Dhaka on Friday afternoon.

Siddique, husband of Bangladesh Environmental Lawyers Association (BELA) Executive Director Syeda Rizwana Hasan, said each of the five-six youths who abducted him was more than 5-feet 7-inch tall and well built.

The microbus carrying the youths hit his car from behind at Narayanganj on Wednesday noon when he was coming to Dhaka.

He said the youths tied his hands and legs and masked his face as soon as he got down from his car.

“I was taken to a house three hours after my abduction. Before that, the vehicle carrying me crossed rivers on two ferryboats. They changed the vehicle after crossing the first river,” he added.

He said two persons would guard him at a room. “They would inform me about time. I would guess the time hearing Azan.”

There was a deep reddish mark on his nose and the right face swelled when he was speaking at the press briefing.

Before the press conference Rizwana Hasan said Siddique was suffering throat pain.

Siddique, however, said the abductors did not torture him.

He said a person visited the room he was kept in and the other people addressed the stranger ‘Bhai’ (brother).

The stranger asked his identity and information related to his job, he said.

“I told him I would talk to my family if they needed money. But ‘the brother’ told me that there will be discussion in the next morning. They brought me breakfast and lunch the next day.”

Siddique said, “’The brother’ came again around 10pm. He told me ‘It will be my loss either way if I kill you or let go of you. I won’t get the money if I kill you, but will get it if you are alive. Let’s free you’.”

He said the abductors then took him to a vehicle. They gave him, blindfolded, some money and dropped him in Ansar Camp area in Mirpur.

“My shirt was torn and I was bare-footed. Then I reached Kaziparha on a rickshaw,” he added.

Siddique then started for his Central Road residence on an auto-rickshaw but the police stopped it on the opposite side of Dhanmondi Club.
“They (police) didn’t believe me when I gave my identity. Later a policeman recognised me and contacted Dhanmondi Police Station.”
Siddique is a senior manager at a readymade garment factory owned by State Minister for Power Nasrul Hamid Bipu.
Different human-rights and professional organisations and civil society leaders reacted sharply after his abduction, urging the government to secure his release from the captors.
Award-winning environmental lawyer Rizwana Hasan had also pleaded authorities to include in their probe the people behind the businesses and projects that suffered financially because of her activism.