Kidnappers realise ransom from families thru’ agents in Bangladesh
A number of kidnapping gangs run by Bangladeshi nationals are trapping their compatriots working abroad by offering lucrative jobs in some European countries.
The gangs, active mainly in some Middle Eastern countries and Greece, lure migrant workers with promises of jobs in Turkey, Italy and some other European countries, kidnap them and then force their families in Bangladesh to pay ransom to their agents here.
The Criminal Investigation Department (CID) of Police arrested 14 local agents of the gangs while six gang operatives were detained in Iran and Greece between September and November last year.
The existence of these organised crime groups first came to the attention of police in September last year when the brother of Rafiqul Islam, who had been kidnapped along with 29 fellow migrants in Iran six months earlier, informed the law enforcement agency of this.
Twenty-nine of the 30 workers escaped from the kidnappers and returned home on December 22 last year. The other victim, however, could not make it home as he was allegedly beaten to death by six of his fellow workers over a dispute at Bandar Abbas in Iran on December 14 after their escape.
Then the CID started an investigation and identified a network of such gangs with agents in Bangladesh and some other countries.
“There are probably 10 to 12 gangs of kidnappers. Each gang consists of around 10 to 15 members. The gangs are operating mainly in the Mideast, using sea routes,” Shah Alam, additional deputy inspector general of the CID, told The Daily Star.
The gangs use their local agents for financial transactions, he said.
The local agents collect the ransom from the victims’ families through bKash mobile money transfer system, courier services, bank accounts and even direct cash transactions.
Two bKash agents have already been arrested for their involvement with the gangs and the CID is now hunting for the gang kingpins.
However, not many victims are released even after their families manage to pay the ransom. Most of the time, the kidnappers do not let them walk away out of fear that the victims, once freed, might expose them to police.
“Once a gang receives the ransom for a victim, it sells him to another group,” the CID official claimed.
The claim somewhat corroborates what some of the 29 returnees from Iran have said.
“I witnessed the death of two Bangladeshis at the hands of them [abductors]. They were killed through brutal tortures,” said Parvez Rana, who too had suffered immense ordeals during his nine-month captivity at Iran’s Bandar Abbas.
“I could not sleep for many nights. Even when they allowed us to sleep, it was not possible to sleep for more than three hours. They would wake us up in the middle of the night and start torturing us so that we asked our families in Bangladesh to pay the ransom,” Rana told The Daily Star.
The gang always used sea routes for transporting the kidnapped workers to avoid detection, said Anwar Hossain, another returnee.
The camps, where the workers were kept captive, were highly secured, making it almost impossible for the inmates to flee.
“Everything we did, including sleeping, eating and bathing, were done on their command and under their watch,” he said.
“I begged for my release, saying my parents were not capable of paying the ransom. But they were too heartless to listen to my cries,” Anwar added.
The CID has collected the documents that the escapees managed to steal from the kidnappers when they made it out.
The documents include some log books containing transaction details and intra-gang contacts which the CID is now scrutinising for further leads.
The CID said they were also trying to repatriate the six members of the gangs arrested in Iran and Greece.
When asked about the total number of workers kidnapped by the gangs, Shah Alam said they did not know the exact number but quite a good number of Bangladeshis were feared to have fallen victims to the gangs.
Courtesy of The Daily Star
