Farhad Mazhar ‘abducted’ from residence: Family

Poet, essayist, and political analyst Farhad Mazhar was abducted from his Adabar residence early Monday, claimed his family.

The police, however, said Farhad Mazhar remained missing after he “went out of his residence in the morning in normal attire”.

Speaking to Prothom Alo, Tejgaon police’s deputy commissioner Biplob Kumar Sarker said Farhad’s wife Farida Akhtar told him that her husband had been abducted.

The police officer then asked Farida to file a general diary with Adabar police station.

Biplob Kumar said the footage of the CCTV cameras installed in front of Farhad’s residence shows that he was “going out of the residence on foot, clad in a normal dress, at 5:05am in the morning”.

The family sources, however, said he usually wakes up early in the morning, but doesn’t go outside the residence at that time. He usually goes out after eight or nine in the morning.

But Farhad, who is said to be a pro-opposition intellectual and has remained vocal against the government’s “onslaught on freedom of expression”, called up his wife at 5:29am over cell phone and said: “I am being taken away. They will kill me.”

Biplob said the police are trying to trace him through tracking his phone. “His locations are being changed frequently. We’re trying to find him.”

A source close to Farhad Mazhar said Farida, the founder of Ubinig, saw her husband working on the computer when she woke up around 4:30am. She woke up again around 5:00am, but then she did not see her husband at the computer table.

Farhad called his wife at 5:29am, the source said.

Farida received a phone call later at 6:21am, which was followed by another call, and she was told to pay a ransom of Tk 3 million (Tk 30,00,000) for her husband's release.

Adabar police station’s sub-inspector Ali Aktar told Prothom Alo that Farhad’s wife Farida Akhtar informed the police about the disappearance of her husband around 10:00am.