FBI agents and police crime scene investigators were digging this evening in the backyard of a Lumpkin Street home owned by a couple identified as friends of the man who reported he last saw missing 2-year-old Tangena Hussain.Hamtramck police arrested Hena Begum on kidnapping and unlawful imprisonment charges, and her husband, Mamunur Rahman Khan, on unlawful imprisonment charges today in connection with the alleged abduction in February of a 15-year-old Hamtramck girl.
Jamrul Hussain, 24, who was arraigned today on kidnapping and sexual misconduct charges in connection with the alleged abduction, is the last person to have seen Tangena, police said.
Hussain, the boyfriend of Nilufa Begum but no relation to the missing girl, is being held in jail on $500,000 bond. He formerly worked at a Ferndale sub shop with Hena Begum, who is not related to the missing girl’s mother, police said.
This afternoon, Nilufa Begum again pleaded with the public for her daughter’s life, speaking from the Detroit gas station where her boyfriend told police the toddler was taken from his locked vehicle Thursday night while he was inside.
“I’m still hoping that my daughter’s still alive somewhere,” Nilufa Begum, 24, said in a barely audible voice, almost expressionless, outside the Marathon gas station on Greenfield at 8 Mile. “Please, go out there and look for my daughter.”
When asked if she thought her boyfriend had anything to do with her daughter’s disappearance, she replied: “I don’t know.”
Investigators and Shawn Patrick Smith, an attorney who is acting as a family spokesman and representing Hussain, said Hussain failed a polygraph or lie detector test. NilufaBegum is scheduled to undergo a polygraph exam Thursday, Smith said.
Hussain, a native of Bangladesh who has lived in the United States for four years, was arrested Saturday and forced to surrender his passport during his arraignment appearance today in 31st District Court in Hamtramck.
Hussain repeatedly told Magistrate Philip Tomaszewski he didn’t understand the charges. He said he had attended school through the 10th grade in Bangladesh, then said he hadn’t gone to school before moving to the United States.
“Who’s kidnapped?” he asked the magistrate. “I didn’t kidnap nobody, sir.”
Afterward, Smith said Hussain and the 15-year-old girl were “friends, very good friends.” He called the age difference a “cultural thing.”
Smith, who had a picture of Hussain and the teenage girl posing with her arms casually wrapped around Hussain’s shoulders, called the kidnapping and other charges against his client “a tool to put a squeeze on the guy.”
After initially telling them she ran away from home, Hamtramck Police said the 15-year-old girl told police she came forward when she learned of the missing 2-year-old. She alleged that the couple hid her in their basement for six days in February while Hussain attacked her. She alleged that Hussain threatened to kill her and her parents if she didn’t claim she ran away.
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