Police recover four missing Thakurgaon schoolgirls in Sylhet

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Police in Bangladesh have recovered four schoolgirls who went missing from the Baliadangi upazila of Thakurgaon district, ending a frantic search that had gripped their local community. The students were located Wednesday afternoon at a bus terminal in Sylhet city.

The girls, all from the same village and attending the same school, had vanished on Tuesday morning after leaving their homes under the guise of attending private tutoring sessions. According to local police, the group includes three students in the tenth grade and one in the eighth grade. The disappearance triggered widespread concern, prompting families to file a general diary with the Baliadangi police station that evening.

Thakurgaon’s Baliadangi police station Officer-in-Charge Bulbul Islam stated that authorities utilized information technology to track the students’ movements. Investigations revealed that the girls initially traveled to Dinajpur before boarding a bus bound for Sylhet. By Wednesday, police identified their location at the Kadamtali bus terminal in Sylhet’s Dakshin Surma area, where they were found waiting in a passenger lounge.

While Assistant Superintendent of Police Snehashish Kumar Das of the Ranisankail circle initially suggested that the girls may have been targeted by human traffickers, local law enforcement in Sylhet offered a different perspective. Dakshin Surma Police Station Officer-in-Charge Mohammad Ashrafuzzaman reported that, during preliminary questioning, the students claimed they had traveled to Sylhet voluntarily for sightseeing.

The students are currently being held at the Dakshin Surma police station, where they have been in contact with their families. A team from the Baliadangi police station is en route to Sylhet to escort the girls back to Thakurgaon, at which point authorities expect to conclude a formal investigation into the circumstances of their departure.