Humayra Abedin was training to be a doctor at Whipps Cross Hospital before her kidnap AFP

A DOCTOR from east London who was held hostage in a forced marriage plot has spoken for the first time about her harrowing four-month ordeal.

Humayra Abedin was kidnapped, beaten and drugged by her family in Bangladesh last year.

The 33-year-old, who at the time was training to be a doctor at Whipps Cross Hospital, was freed last December after lawyers from the UK and Bangladesh convinced a court in the south Asian country to demand her release.

Seven months after returning to the UK, Abedin said of her ordeal: "What they did to me was a complete abuse."

The torture began last August after she was duped into flying to the country after being told by distant relatives that her mother was ill.

Little did she know that she was to become a victim of her family's scheme.

Abedin told the Independent on Sunday about the moment she was abducted: "My face was covered with a piece of cloth by men who told me they were policemen, before they carried me out into an ambulance which was parked outside the house.

"They held my arms and legs, carried me like a prisoner, while my parents stood in the background."

"They held my arms and legs, carried me like a prisoner, while my parents stood in the background."

On the request of her family, Abedin was driven to a private hospital. Her kidnappers stopped her screaming by holding her down and gagging her.

"This was the first time I thought, 'This is it. I am dying'," said Abedin. "I begged them to stop."

Every morning and night for three months, she was forced to swallow dangerously high doses of powerful tranquillisers. Abedin was kept a prisoner in her hospital, goaded at by staff and relatives, and was denied contact with the outside world.

She says: "After three months of medication, verbal abuse, emotional blackmail, my mind was weakened. I felt like a puppet. I had lost all hope and had no more energy to fight back.

"These people [the doctors] are meant to be health professionals, but what they did to me was a complete abuse. This I will never forgive or forget."

Her parents told her the only way she could end her ordeal was to give up her life in England and marry a Muslim stranger they picked for her. She refused.

She said: "I was totally focused on my career in England and very happy. I was also learning how to do very ordinary things for the first time, like washing clothes and shopping.

"This gave me a great sense of satisfaction to be independent instead of having people helping me with everything like at home. I guess I was changing, just becoming more individual and independent."

Abedin first came to England in 2002, where she was studying for a masters at Leeds University. Even then, she revealed, there was occasional talk about marriage, but she made it clear that studying was her number-one commitment.

"Some of my aunties had wanted me to get married before I came to UK, so that I didn't come alone. This would have been quite normal. In fact, most of my friends who went abroad did so after they got married.

"But I didn't want that and my dad totally agreed every time it came up. I just used the same excuse and kept putting them off."

Before her kidnap, she began dating a Hindu software engineer. Reports said that her Muslim parents were angry on hearing this as they wanted her to settle with a man from the same faith.

At the end of 2007, a cousin, came to visit and started reporting to her parents about the new-found independence. After his return to Bangladesh, tensions within the family began.

Abedin recalled: "The family pressure was building. There were more phone calls, more talk about guys they wanted me to meet, but I told them this wasn't what I wanted.

"It wasn't about religion. It was a cultural thing. In their eyes, I was becoming too Westernised – too focused on my career and getting too old to be alone."

After her kidnap and torture, Abedin raised the alarm to her boyfriend by text message. It read: "Please help me. My life is in danger. They have locked me in house. My job is at stake. They are making my life hell."

Her boyfriend alerted the authorities and task shifted on releasing her from the clutches of her family.

Since being freed, Abedin has cut all ties with her family. She changed her numbers and moved houses. But she admits she still loves them, albeit not enough to forgive them.

"The whole incident has made me realise how precious and beautiful life is and it's made me stronger, so maybe it was my destiny," she said.

"Right now my focus is my career. I love my job, and I also want to do what I can to raise awareness about forced marriage – the protection order was the turning point in my life. In the future, I definitely want to get married to the right person, have children – all those things that I always wanted."