Bangladeshi government officials say the controversial writer and womens' rights activist, Taslima Nasreen, has returned to Dhaka after four years in exile.
The officials said she was believed to be staying with her family, but relatives of the writer declined to comment on her whereabouts.
Nasreen left Bangladesh in 1994 for Sweden and, later, New York after thousands demonstrated in the Bangladeshi capital demanding that she be punished for blasphemy.
They were enraged by her book "Shame", which is now banned in Bangladesh.
She was also quoted in an Indian newspaper as saying that the Koran should be revised to take into account women's rights, though she denies saying this.
The Bangladeshi government responded by charging her with "deliberately and maliciously outraging religious feeling."
'Nobody wants a female child'
In a BBC interview from exile in 1995 she said that women in Bangladesh were taught to be slaves.
"If you go into a labour room, in any hospital, you can hear the cry of women giving birth to a female child. They cry because their husband will divorce them."
"Nobody wants a female child, and girls are not allowed to go to school to study. And if any women becomes educated, it is not for herself."
"It is for getting a good match because well-established men want to marry educated women."
Taslima Nasreen's sympathisers in the West were quick to compare her position with that of the British novelist, Salman Rushdie.
Her outspoken feminism, chain smoking and sexually explicit writing left some in the country with the impression that she was going out of her way to offend entrenched conservative values.
Country profiles
Sharif: I'm innocent
India's malnutrition 'crisis'
Tamil rebels consolidate gains
Saqlain stars in Aussie collapse
(From Sport)
Pakistan fears Afghan exodus
Hindu-Buddhist conference in Nepal
Afghan clerics issue bin Laden fatwa
Culture awards at Asian festival
Gandhi pleads for husband's killer
UN condemns Afghan bombing
Gandhi prize for Bangladeshi