Farhad Mazhar 'Abduction': 'Ex-female employee of his NGO gives statement under 164'

A former female employee of Farhad Mazhar's NGO in a judicial statement yesterday said the writer contacted her several times on July 3, the day he reportedly went missing from outside his Adabar residence in the capital, court and police sources said.

She said the writer gave her Tk 15,000 through a mobile banking platform around 7:00pm that day.

Metropolitan Magistrate Sattyabrata Shikder recorded her statement after Mahbubul Alam, an inspector of the Detective Branch of Dhaka Metropolitan Police, had produced her before him.

According to her statement, the writer on July 3 called her five to six times and she phoned him two to three times.

Around 6:20am, Farhad told the woman that he was on his way to collect money for her.

“At around 11:00am, I phoned him and wanted to know whether he had been abducted. He told me that he was alright.”

She also said she joined Farhad's organisation UBINIG (Policy Research for Development Alternative) between 2006 and 2007. She got acquainted with the writer when she was posted in Cox's Bazar. She left the NGO in 2009.

However, she said Farhad used to give her Tk 10,000 – Tk 12,000 a month depending on her need and that in April, she asked the writer to give her money.

On July 4, Farhad in a judicial statement before another magistrate said several unidentified men forced him into a microbus and blindfolded him minutes after he came out of his Adabor house to buy medicines in the early hours of July 3.

Law enforcers found him on a bus in Jessore's Noapara around 11:30pm on the same day.