Asian Pacific American Heritage Month: Tangena Hussain

In honor of Asian Pacific American Heritage Month, I am profiling one Asian or Pacific Islander MP for every day of the month of May. Today’s case is Tangena Hussain, a two-year-old girl who disappeared from Detroit, Michigan on October 2, 2008. She is of Bangladeshi descent.

Tangena’s mother’s boyfriend, Jamrul Hussain (no relation) is the last person known to have seen her, and his behavior in the aftermath of her disappearance is pretty sketchy. He didn’t immediately alert the authorities when she was supposedly abducted from his car while he was stopped at a gas station. By the time the police were called, nearly half an hour had passed.

Jamrul was later sentenced to one to fifteen years in prison on an unrelated statutory rape charge involving a teenage girl. I don’t know whether he’s still in prison or not, but a search of offenders in the Michigan Department of Corrections doesn’t turn up anyone by that name. Last I heard, he hadn’t been officially named as a suspect in Tangena’s disappearance, simply because there’s no evidence as to what happened to the little girl.

Tangena’s mother has returned to Bangladesh and the case has gone cold. I haven’t seen any news about this missing child in a long time.

If still alive, Tangena would be twelve years old today.