Two sisters, who are said to have gone to Syria, have been out of contact with family members in Khulna since April last year.
While Saima Akter Mukta, 38, and Rabeya Akter Tumpa, 35, remain traceless, family members believe they are still in the war-torn country.
Saima’s husband Saiful Islam Sujan, 40, was reportedly a top hacker of global terror group Islamic State (IS). Family members suspect he had lured both the sisters to Syria.
Saiful was killed in a suspected drone strike in Syria’s Raqqa in December last year, according to media reports.
He married Saima in 2004 and went to London on a scholarship that year. Saima moved to the UK a year later and with her help, Rabeya went there in 2013, family members say.
The trio came back in early 2014, according to Bilkis Akter Chaina, elder sister of Saima and Rabeya. A few days later, they left Bangladesh.
Bilkis said the last time the two sisters contacted her was in April last year. “They used to call me, but now I have no communications with them.”
Before going out of trace, the sisters told Bilkis that they were in Syria. “We are really worried as they were in a country like Syria,” she told this correspondent on Friday.
Bilkis, who lives with her ailing mother at a rented house in Khulna, added she had requested her sisters to come back.
The family says it owns a house on Haji Ismail Link Road in Sonadanga in Khulna metropolitan area.
However, none from the family members stayed in that house in the last one year, said some neighbours on Saturday.
Saiful and the two sisters vanished after a few days of their return in 2014. They were never seen again, they added.
Assistant Commissioner Sonali Sen (Sonadanga zone) of Khulna Metropolitan Police said they were investigating the two sisters.
WHO IS SAIFUL?
Saiful was accused of laundering money from the UK to Syria via Bangladesh, according to media reports.
Police in Dhaka raided his office in Dhaka’s Karwan Bazar area and nabbed five persons, including his brother-in-law Tajul Islam Shakil.
According to a report published in the UK-based The Telegraph, Saiful became a senior militant figure when he replaced a leading IS hacker from Britain, Junaid Hussain, who was killed by an air strike.
According to the newspaper, Saiful was an important figure in their hacking campaign and efforts to defeat surveillance and tracking by Western spy agencies.
His death near the IS stronghold of Raqqa on December 10, 2015, came less than 18 months after he had left his home near Cardiff, where he had studied and gone on to be a well-respected director of a computer firm.
Saiful entered the UK in 2003 and went on to study computer system engineering at the University of Glamorgan, says the report.
He along with his brother set up a Newport-based computer firm that provided online ordering systems. He also held at least two patents for devising computer systems and was regarded as a pillar of the local Bangladeshi business community.
Source: The Daily Star
