Instagram

Report: Missing Bedford Park Mom Could Be Dead

Report: Missing Bedford Park Mom Could Be Dead
Mahfuza Rahman

The NYPD believes a Bedford Park mother who vanished nearly two years ago is dead. They’ve since zeroed in on the woman’s husband, who left the country with their 9-year-old daughter a week after the woman went missing.

Police told the New York Daily News that the victim, Mahfuza Rahman, 30, is likely the victim of foul play.

Rahman disappeared on Dec. 8, 2015 after leaving her job at Bellevue Hospital where she worked as a nurse. Rahman did not report to work the next day, signaling to staffers that something may have happened. Security officers were dispatched to her home on East 198th Street off Jerome Avenue. They found Rahman’s husband, Mohammad Chowdury, but not Rahman.

Chowdury told hospital police that his wife left to her native Bangladesh after learning her parents were in an accident, which turned out to be a lie. He told hospital police Rahman would be back in March 2016. When she was expected for work, she didn’t show. That’s when the hospital filed a missing persons case with the 52nd Precinct.

Report: Missing Bedford Park Mom Could Be Dead
ADALINE WALKER-SANTIAGO (l), joins Mohammed Mujumder (second from left), one of several members of the Bronx’s Bangladeshi community, calling on anyone with information on the disappearance of Mahfuza Rahman, to come forward.
Photo by Adi Talwar

Chowdury and their daughter left the country a week after Rahman was last seen, according to a neighbor. “The last time I seen the husband was Dec. 15 and he told me, ‘watch my house because I got to go to my country,” a neighbor, John Garcia, told the Norwood News when the paper first published Rahman’s disappearance.

MOHAMMED CHOWDURY (PICTURED) is wanted for questioning by the police.

Cops spent a week combing through any evidence they could find inside the house. Investigators noticed the couple’s one-family home had a flooded basement, a second floor that was freshly painted, and stacks of mail. No clues turned up in their investigation of the house.

Bangladesh, part of the subcontinent of India, has extradition laws in cooperation with U.S. authorities. There is no evidence linking Chowdury to his wife’s disappearance.

Welcome to the Norwood News, a bi-weekly community newspaper that primarily serves the northwest Bronx communities of Norwood, Bedford Park, Fordham and University Heights. Through our Breaking Bronx blog, we focus on news and information for those neighborhoods, but aim to cover as much Bronx-related news as possible. Founded in 1988 by Mosholu Preservation Corporation, a not-for-profit affiliate of Montefiore Medical Center, the Norwood News began as a monthly and grew to a bi-weekly in 1994. In September 2003 the paper expanded to cover University Heights and now covers all the neighborhoods of Community District 7. The Norwood News exists to foster communication among citizens and organizations and to be a tool for neighborhood development efforts. The Norwood News runs the Bronx Youth Journalism Heard, a journalism training program for Bronx high school students. As you navigate this website, please let us know if you discover any glitches or if you have any suggestions. We’d love to hear from you. You can send e-mails to norwoodnews@norwoodnews.org or call us anytime (718) 324-4998.

Like this story? Leave your comments below.