Lured to Teknaf only to be sold, held for ransom
Résumé détaillé
On November 3, eight construction workers left Cox’s Bazar town for Teknaf, the district’s border upazila, after a man offered them jobs.
On November 3, eight construction workers left Cox’s Bazar town for Teknaf, the district’s border upazila, after a man offered them jobs.
The man, identified with a single name, Sohel, arranged two CNG-run autorickshaws for the journey. They were taken to a house near Baharchhara and told work would begin the next day.
Later, armed men moved them to a tin-roofed house beside a betel nut plantation, blindfolded them, tied ropes around their waists, and marched them into the hills, one worker told The Daily Star, requesting anonymity for fear of reprisals.
The captors took the workers’ phones and cash and beat those who protested, the worker said, adding that some armed guards looked just 12 or 13. Police case documents list a 15-year-old among the accused.
The worker said their captors told them Sohel had sold each of them for Tk 20,000. The armed men gave them two options: pay Tk 3.5 lakh per person for an illegal sea journey to Malaysia, or Tk 4 lakh to return home.
The worker was among 56 people rescued on November 5 when a joint force of army, Border Guard Bangladesh and police raided the Nuralipara hills, about three kilometres west of the West Leda Rohingya camp in Teknaf’s Hnila union.
Army soldier Titas Sheikh died after being shot when armed suspects opened fire.
Interviews with victims, community sources, and officials over the past two days, along with police records, point to a loose chain of recruiters, transporters, armed guards, and boat operators exploiting Rohingya seeking passage to Malaysia and Bangladeshis lured by jobs or abducted for ransom.
According to law enforcement records, 3,534 people, most of them Rohingya, were rescued while attempting to travel to Malaysia through the Cox’s Bazar coast between 2016 and 2025.
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