Two school staffers who went missing last week have been turned over to officials in Rakhine State’s Maungdaw Township following their release by their captors on Wednesday.
Bo Win, the headmaster of a school in the village of Thin Baw Hla, and Ohnmar Kyaw, a teacher at the same school, were travelling to the town of Maungdaw to attend an administrative meeting when they disappeared last Thursday.
It later emerged that the pair had been kidnapped and were being held for ransom in neighbouring Bangladesh.
On Wednesday evening, their abductors released them in Kharang Khali (Chan Chaung in Burmese), a village in Bangladesh’s Cox’s Bazar District, where they were later held for questioning by Bangladeshi authorities.
According to a Maungdaw official, they are now back in Myanmar after being escorted across the Bangladesh-Myanmar Friendship Bridge to the town of Taungpyoletwea at around 10pm on Thursday.
“They were held in Bangladesh so that the two governments could take collaborative action,” said the official, who spoke to Myanmar Now on condition of anonymity.
It was rumoured that a ransom of 5m taka ($54,000) had been demanded by the kidnappers, but that this amount was later reduced after negotiations.
Thein Tun Aung, a relative of Bo Win, said the exact amount that was paid could not be disclosed, as it came from multiple sources and the total had not yet been calculated.
According to a Maungdaw resident with knowledge of the matter, the owner of a local business and officials based in Maungdaw helped to facilitate the exchange.
“The families of the victims managed to give the ransom with the help of a construction company owned by a friend of one of the families, and the local administration department transferred the money to the kidnappers,” he said.
The families had reportedly been told that the two missing educators would be returned to them in the border village of Nga Khu Ya on Thursday morning, but later learned that they were in the custody of Bangladeshi officials.
Meanwhile, there were reports that a man suffered a leg injury after shots were fired during a search for the pair near the village of Mei Te last Saturday. No further details about the incident were available at the time of reporting.
Residents who took part in the search said they received no assistance from junta troops or border guard forces based in the area.
On Monday, the leader of the Arakan Army (AA), Twan Mrat Naing, accused the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army (ARSA) of involvement in the incident. ARSA denied the charge.
The following day, the AA released a statement suggesting that Myanmar’s military was trying to create tensions between different religious groups in Rakhine.
