Three teenage girls who went missing from the Fasiakhali Union under Lama Upazila in Bandarban remain untraced three days after they left their homes on Sunday (October 12) under the pretext of collecting registration cards from their school. Police and family members confirmed the development on Wednesday (October 15).
The missing adolescents, aged between 14 and 15 years, are residents of the same neighborhood in Fasiakhali Union and are close relatives. Among them, the 15-year-old girl is a ninth-grade student at a school in the Manikpur area of Chakaria, while the other two are seventh-grade students at a local high school.
According to family accounts, the three girls departed from their residences at approximately 9:30 AM on Sunday, heading toward Manikpur in Chakaria. While the 15-year-old was reportedly bound for her institution to retrieve her registration card, family members have been unable to verify whether they ever reached the school premises.
One of the mothers of the missing girls stated that none of them were supposed to possess a mobile phone. However, the driver of the auto-rickshaw they boarded to travel to Chakaria informed the families that he noticed an Android smartphone in their possession. After failing to locate them across various potential destinations, the distraught families formally lodged a general diary at the local police station on Tuesday (October 14).
Lama Police Station Officer-in-Charge (OC) Mohammad Kaisar Hamid disclosed that law enforcement received information from locals who reportedly spotted the three girls with a mobile phone at the Chakaria bus stand. However, investigators have yet to determine their subsequent movements from that location. Police suspect that the missing teenagers might currently be staying somewhere in Chakaria or Cox's Bazar.
Officer-in-Charge Kaisar Hamid further added that law enforcement personnel are actively examining closed-circuit television (CCTV) footage collected from various locations stretching from Chakaria to Cox's Bazar in an ongoing effort to trace and recover the missing girls.
