The long wait...

Five-year-old Mahin was over the moon as he would celebrate the festivities of Eid with both his parents this year.

In his young life, he enjoyed only a few Eids with his father, a used furniture trader in Dhaka's Gulshan area, who could not always manage to come home in Amtoli of Barguna. 

His father, Sohel Hossain Montu, finally brought him along with his mother and grandmother to live in Dhaka in January this year after his hard work started to pay off.

Little Mahin was admitted to a local school and everything was going smoothly for the family.

What Mahin does not know yet is that all hell broke loose on the family on February 27 when his father went “missing”.

On that day, Sohel was returning to his rental house in the capital's Dhalpur area after attending a religious programme of Charmonai Pir in Barisal.

Sohel and his friend Hanif Mridha, 40, also from Barguna, were returning to Dhaka on a launch. They disembarked the launch near Kanchpur in Shiddhirganj of Narayanganj, Sohel's mother Momtaz Begum told The Daily Star quoting the driver of Hanif's car.

As they were about to get in the car, several men claiming to be law enforcers approached them and drove away with them in a microbus.

They also took Hanif's car along with the driver after holding him hostage at gunpoint, she said, adding that the driver was released near Purbachal area later the same day.

Several weeks later, on March 17, a few hours after a suicide blast at the Rapid Action Battalion's Ashkona barrack in the capital, the Rab claimed to have picked up Hanif from near the blast site.

Later in the day, Rab-1 claimed that Hanif -- a transport businessman who owned three buses and a motorcar -- had died in a hospital where they sent him with complaints of chest pain. Sohel's family members were alarmed at the news of Sohel’s friend Hanif's death in Rab custody as “the two were picked up together by law enforcers”.

After the concerned members of Sohel's family met Rab-1 officials, they denied having Sohel in their custody.   “Then we requested the officials to help us find my husband,” said Sohel's wife Nipa Begum.  When asked whether Rab-1 was holding Sohel, Lt Col Sarwar bin Quasem, commanding officer of the battalion, told The Daily Star, “The family requested us to find him. We tried, but could not find him.”

Commenting over the allegation of abduction by law enforcers, Rab's Legal and Media Wing Director Mufti Mahmud Khan said, “We've heard about it. But one has to keep in mind that people were abducted by gangs of criminals posing as DB police and Rab on various occasions. We have arrested members of such gangs at different times.”

Earlier, on March 4, weeks before Rab admitted to have detained Hanif, his brother Halim Mridha filed a general diary with Shiddhirganj Police Station stating the abduction incident of Hanif and Sohel on February 27. After Hanif's death in Rab custody, both Halim and Hanif's wife Kulsum Begum told reporters at Hanif's Rayer Bazar house that a group of men, identifying themselves as law enforcers, came to their house by a HiAce microbus on the night Hanif went missing. The men took Hanif's motorbike with them when they left.

Just two days before Hanif's death, on March 15, several men in plain clothes and one of them in Rab uniform brought Hanif to the house in a white HiAce microbus and forced Hanif to sign and hand them over two cheques worth Tk 6.70 lakh. They left with him after they got the cheques, claimed Halim.

Meanwhile, during a visit to Sohel's house in Dhaka's Dhalpur area on Monday, The Daily Star correspondent found Mahin busy with toys his father had bought for him over the years. Sohel’s wife Nipa was busy packing their belongings as they can no longer afford to live in Dhaka after the disappearance of the lone breadwinner of the family.

 “He never committed any crime... We are living in fear and uncertainty. Mahin had to quit school” she said. “The abductors may not release him as his friend Hanif is dead already,” feared Nipa. When asked about his father, Mahin said he had promised him that “he will come home soon.” But the family is scheduled to return to their Amtoli home today.