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Once abducted, now abandoned

SABRINA KARIM MURSHED
"I don't want to go home," said Rubel to this Star City correspondent with firmness that belied his 12-year-old frame. The youngster was being released from the National Juvenile Correction Centre in Tongi on January 13.
The boy was once abducted by child traffickers and had spent six years in different jails across the country. Finally, Aparajeyo Bangladesh, a non-government organisation (NGO) working to uphold the rights of children stepped in to get the boy released.
"I do not feel like going back. No one cared to take me home even after many announcements were made on television and newspapers after police had rescued me," said Rubel with hurt in his eyes.
"I do not think my family loves me or needs me anymore," he said with a flustered expression.
Rubel was six when he was abducted. He was playing in a field near his house in Dhaka's Mirpur in 1997. "A woman came over and offered me some chocolates. I ate them then everything went blank," he recalled.
When he regained consciousness, Rubel found himself in police custody and from there, he was sent to Chapainawabganj District Jail. He was detained for a few days and then transferred to Dhaka Central Jail. He finally ended up at the Tongi Correction Centre in 2000.
Rubel remembered his home vaguely. All he could say was that his village home was somewhere in Shariatpur and his father owned a rice warehouse at Muktijoddha Market in Mirpur. The saddest part of the whole episode unfolded when Rubel's apprehensions came true. Members of Aparajeyo Bangladesh traced his family and took Rubel there last Friday. But there would be no homecoming celebrations.
"He is not my own son," said Abu Taher, Rubel's supposed father. Taher's father Yusuf Khan told the NGO people that Rubel had been adopted when Yusuf's daughter, a childless woman, wanted a foster baby. But after Rubel, barely 12-months old then, was brought she refused to accept him as he apparently was not good looking.
Yusuf could not return Rubel as his real mother had already
died and the father could not be traced.
"Since then he had lived with us until his abduction. He knew Taher as his father," Yusuf Khan explained to Mahbubur Rahman, a senior legal advisor of Aparajeyo Bangladesh.
Abu Taher and other members of his family are not interested in keeping Rubel. They claimed that they are not financially solvent to maintain him.
The boy does not have a clue about the identity of his real parents. Nor does he have anywhere to go. Rubel is now living at the shelter home of Aparajeyo Bangladesh in Mirpur.