'Rescued' children kept in shelter home

Nine children, out of 10, who were "rescued" from a flat in the capital's Banasree on Saturday, have been sent to the Juvenile Development Centre in Gazipur while another was handed over to his family.

Police said the children were sent to the shelter home following a Dhaka court order as their guardians could not be contacted or identified immediately.

The court yesterday also put their four "captors"--Arifur Rahman, Hasibul Hasan Sabuj, Zakia Sultana, and Feroz Alam Khan Shuvo -- on a two-day remand each in a case filed by one Monir, uncle of one of the children, under the human trafficking act.

Officer-in-Charge of Rampura Police Station Mahbubur Rahman told The Daily Star that they will interrogate the four to verify whether their claim of running an NGO, Adamya Bangladesh, which "shelters such street children" is true.

Khadiza Begum, caretaker of the house, said the NGO had been paying Tk 17,000 as rent for the last 10 months.

After the incident, this correspondent talked to the children who said that they had been staying in the flat for at least six months. They were treated well and no one even tortured them.