One of the four youths, who had gone missing from the capital’s Banani in December last year, returned to his village home in Barisal yesterday.
Mahedi Hasan Howlader neither remembered the place where he was kept nor did he have any idea about the people who took him there.
The 25-year-old man said he was kept blindfolded all the time and was not properly fed.
On December 1, Mahedi along with three other studentsBarisal Correspondent — Zain Hossain Khan Pavel, Shafayat Hossain and Md Sujan — went missing.
Pavel and Shafayat are students of North South University and childhood friends, while Sujon worked at an advertising firm in the city, according to their families and friends.
Sujon and Mahedi are friends too and hailed from the same village in Barisal, their family members said.
A week before their disappearance, Mahedi had come to the capital for a job interview.
Police said they collected CCTV camera footage of a Banani restaurant where the four had snacks together just before they went traceless.
Yesterday, Mahedi told this correspondent that his friend Sujon took him to the restaurant that day and introduced him to the two other youths.
Coming out of the restaurant, he and Sujon were looking for a rickshaw. Suddenly, some men appeared there and forced him into a vehicle. He became unconscious immediately.
As he regained consciousness, he found himself blindfolded at an unknown place.
Mahedi said he didn’t know what happened to his friend and the two other youths.
Yesterday morning, he woke up and found that his blindfold was not there. He was lying under a tree in Nabinagar area of Savar on the outskirts of the capital.
He also found Tk 600 in his pocket. Later, he went to Nabinagar bus stand and boarded a bus to Barisal.
Mahedi reached his village in Babuganj upazila around 4:00pm.
His neighbours said he looked sick and disturbed.
Later, Mahedi was taken to Babuganj Police Station for interrogation, said sources there.
Mahedi’s father Jahangir Hossain, a constable at Jhalakathi Sadar Police Station, told this correspondent that they were very happy to reunite with his son. “Now, I want to see those who took away my son face justice.”
Asked, he said he didn’t get any phone call from anyone for ransom.
According to the general dairy filed by the families of Pavel and Sujon, Pavel went to Banani Super Market between 8:00pm and 8:30pm on December 1 to photocopy some papers, but didn’t return home.
It was also mentioned that his two friends Shafayat, 24, and Md Sujan, 25, who were with him at that time, also went missing.
The families of Pavel and Sujan used to live in the same building in Banani.
