A crowd yesterday foiled an abduction attempt by four people who identified themselves as detectives and tried to whisk a man in a microbus at Mogbazar in the capital.
The criminals equipped with handcuff and walkie-talkie forced a man into the vehicle around 10:30am near Mogbazar intersection, soon after he had come out of a bank withdrawing around Tk 7 lakh, police said, quoting witnesses.
As the victim cried for help and started kicking on the window glasses of the vehicle in a desperate effort to get free, locals started chasing the microbus, which got stuck in traffic several hundred metres away.
All the four criminals managed to flee before the locals rescued the victim and smashed the microbus with BRTA registration number -- Dhaka Metro Cha--139551. This newspaper could not verify the registration.
The law enforcers also could not identify the abductors and the owner of the vehicle immediately. “We will find try to find out the owner taking information from the BRTA," said Maruf Hossain Sorder, deputy commissioner of Ramna Division Police.
Some documents, the handcuff and the walkie-talkie were recovered from the microbus, said police, adding that the criminals were abducting the victim after impersonating as members of Detective Branch (DB) of police.
“It seemed a scene from a move. Some people were whisking a man who kept on shouting asking for help," said Motaleb Hossain, a witness who is a roadside fruit vendor.
The way the man was picked up resembles many mugging incidents carried out by criminals posing as detectives and in some cases by the members of law enforcers. The involvement of law enforcers in picking up people in such way were reported in last couple of months.
An assistant sub-inspector of police and one of his accomplices were caught red-handed while trying to "mug" a trader in Dhaka's Khamarbari area on October 17 last year.
On November 10 last year, some police men led by a sub-inspector of Dakkhin Khan Police Station officials took away Tk 40,000 from one Md Alauddin while searching his body.
The SI was forced to return Alauddin the money after he filed a written complaint with the deputy commissioner of Uttara Zone of DMP.
In Brahmanbaria, two policemen and a woman were arrested on November 21 for their alleged involvement in the kidnapping of one Zakir Hossain Bhuiyan of Dewra village in Sarail and realising ransom for his release.
