4 workers ‘kidnapped’

Four workers of a Roads and Highways Department (RHD) project in Khagrhachharhi’s Matiranga have allegedly been kidnapped.

They were last seen at the construction site of a bridge in Bangmara on the Khagraccharhi-Chittagong highway on Sunday night, Assistant Superintendant of Police (circle) Shahjahan Jahan said on Monday.

“We heard shots being fired at around 11pm and there have been no trace of them since,” project site caretaker Suniti Tripura told bdnews24.com.

Workers ‘Raju’, ‘Faroque’ and ‘Harun’, and another who could not be identified, are missing.

One of them operates a bulldozer and the other assists him, said Tripura.

Other workers claim their colleagues were kidnapped because of unheeded ‘extortion demands’.

“Members of the UPDF and Janasanghati Samiti (NM Larma) have been demanding we pay them money,” said Hasanuzzaman, proprietor of Messrs Anwar and Sons, the project contractor.

“They might have abducted the four,” he said.

Md Ismail Hossain, Roads & Highways Department Executive Engineer in Khagrhachharhi, said the bridge was being built with government funds under the Eastern Bridge Improvement Project.

A total of 14 bridges are being constructed on the Khagraccharhi-Chittagong highway at a cost of Tk 1.21 billion, he said.

The RHD is funding the five being built at Bangmara and the rest with funds provided by the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA).