The body of a 15-year-old boy lay unidentified in a Chattogram hospital morgue for two days after he went missing, while his desperate family, unable to locate him, was defrauded of Tk 60,000 by a scam ring falsely claiming he had been kidnapped. The family later identified the body as the boy’s after recognizing him in photographs police had posted on social media.
The boy was a ninth-grade student at a private school in Chattogram city’s Halishahar area, and a resident of the Sandwip area with his family. Last Saturday, he left home in Halishahar’s Chuna Factory area, saying he was going to coaching classes, and never returned.
After searching various places, the family filed a general diary at Halishahar police station. The following day, a man called claiming the boy had been kidnapped and was being held, demanding money for his release. The caller then told the family to come to the Sholoshahar area.
The family informed police, who went to the location but found no one. The caller then pressed them to send money to a bKash number. Eventually, the boy’s uncle sent Tk 60,000 to that number from his own bKash account. It later emerged the number was registered to a man in Lohagara upazila.
Separately, police recovered the body of an unidentified teenage boy from the Patenga sea beach area Saturday night and sent it to the morgue at Chattogram Medical College Hospital. Monday evening, after police posted photographs on social media, the family and Halishahar police identified the body as the missing boy’s.
Md Pervez, officer-in-charge of Patenga police station, said an unidentified teenage boy’s body had been recovered two days earlier and sent to the morgue. After photographs were later published on social media, the family and Halishahar police station confirmed the boy’s identity.
Police said the boy had gone to Patenga beach with five friends after coaching class. When the group went into the water, he was swept away by the waves. His four friends, frightened, did not tell anyone what had happened. The boy’s family has filed a case over the incident, and the four friends have been arrested.
Kazi Muhammad Sultan Ahsan Uddin, officer-in-charge of Halishahar police station, said the boy had gone to Patenga with friends and was swept away while in the water; his friends, frightened, kept the matter hidden afterward. He said the extortion of money from the family under the false claim of kidnapping is also under investigation.
A relative of the boy alleged that although the family had been searching for him for two days, they had no way of knowing the body in the morgue was his. The relative demanded that those who extorted money under the guise of a kidnapping be identified and brought to justice.
বাংলায় মূল প্রতিবেদন পড়ুন · Read the original Bengali report