The police have rescued two Rohingya girls aged 16 and 10 who locals said fled Bhasan Char island in Noakhali’s Hatiya to Subarna Char, a coastal upazila in the same district, by boat.
The locals caught the two in the Meghna Market area under Mohammadpur union around 8:00 pm on Wednesday, but two Rohingya men who were with the girls fled.
The girls were later handed to the police, reports bdnews24.com.
The girls are from the new Rohingya camp No. 24 in Bhasan Char. The government has moved around 18,000 members of the Myanmar ethnic minority from cramped refugee camps in Cox’s Bazar since the relocation began by the end of last year.
Bangladesh hosts more than 1.0 million Rohingya Muslims who fled decades of persecution and a 2017 military crackdown in Buddhist majority Myanmar’s Rakhine state.
The government is relocating 100,000 refugees to a housing project in the remote island, saying no one is relocated against their will.
The international community, including the UN, expressed concerns on the geographical position of the island vulnerable to storms and tidal waves.
The government has maintained that the refugees would be in better condition than they were in Cox’s Bazar.
Ziaul Haque, OC of Char Jabbar Police Station, said they would act as per the law.
The police were yet to confirm why the girls fled the island.
Abul Kalam Azad, chairman of Mohammadpur union council, said the four Rohingya refugees arrived in Char Mozammel village by a fishing boat around 10:00 pm on Tuesday.
He alleged that some locals helped the Rohingya flee in exchange for Tk 100,000 per person.
Others realised what was going on and caught the two girls, Azad said.
Noakhali Superintendent of Police Alamgir Hossain said two other Rohingya men had earlier been caught in Sandwip while fleeing Bhasan Char. Another Rohingya fled while undergoing treatment at Noakhali General Hospital.