Missing BNP leader Salahuddin Ahmed pops up in India

Around two months after going missing from Dhaka city, BNP leader Salahuddin Ahmed has been found in Shillong, the capital of north-eastern Indian state of Meghalaya.

A Shillong police patrol spotted him loitering in Golf Link area of the tourist city on Monday evening. As he could not produce any documents and also appeared to be “mentally unbalanced”, they arrested him for trespassing and admitted him to a mental hospital, The Shillong Times Editor Patricia Mukhim told The Daily Star yesterday, quoting city police Chief Vivek Syiem.

It still remains a mystery how and when Salahuddin, joint secretary general of the BNP, landed in Shillong after he was allegedly picked up by plainclothes law enforcers from a house in Dhaka's Uttara area on March 10.

Talking to this correspondent over the phone, an Indian journalist, who briefly spoke to Salahuddin at the mental hospital, said the BNP leader claimed a group of unknown people had picked him up from Dhaka.

Salahuddin told the journalist that he was unaware how he had ended up in Shillong on Monday.

Quoting a Shillong police official, Patricia Mukhim said Salahuddin was unstable during primary questioning by the police. He was giving unsatisfactory answers, and it became quite clear that he had trespassed into Indian territory.

Police later registered a case against him under the Foreigners' Act.

“He [Salahuddin] said he was from Bangladesh but was not in the best of health. So they admitted him to the psychiatric ward of Meghalaya Institute of Mental Health and Neurological Science,” Mukhim quoted Syiem as saying.

As doctors there certified that he was mentally well, Salahuddin was later shifted to Shillong Civil Hospital for better treatment.

“We are waiting for the hospital authorities to tell us when he can be discharged for questioning,” Syiem added.

Meghalaya Inspector General of Police GHP Raju told our New Delhi Correspondent that Bangladesh High Commission in New Delhi had been informed of the matter.

Asked when Salahuddin would be produced before the court, Superintendent of Police of East Khasi Hills S Kharkrang said, "It all depends on when the doctors release Ahmed. Right now, the doctors at the civil hospital have advised him to take rest."

It was Salahuddin's wife Hasina Ahmed who first informed the media that her husband was found in Shillong and was receiving treatment at a hospital there.

“I got a call from an official at the Meghalaya Institute of Mental Health and Neurological Science around 11:30am. In English, the official told me that a man named Salahuddin is being treated there and he wants to talk with me.

“As soon as he spoke to me, I could easily recognise that it was my husband's voice,” she told journalists at her Gulshan house around 2:00pm.

“He [Salahuddin] told me that he is in reasonably good health. He asked me to convey the news to party men and madam [BNP chief Khaleda Zia], and take measures to bring him back home as early as possible,” said Hasina, a former BNP lawmaker from Cox's Bazar.

She, however, couldn't say how and when Salahuddin had gone there.

Hasina said she along with two relatives applied for Indian visa to go to Shillong to bring back Salahuddin. She also sought government's assistance to that end.

Soon after the phone conversation with her husband, Hasina went to Khaleda's Gulshan residence around 12:15pm to give the party chief the news about Salahuddin.

Over the last two months, Salahuddin's family members and his party repeatedly claimed that plainclothes law enforcers, including Rab personnel, had picked up the BNP leader from a house in Dhaka's Uttara area on March 10.

Law enforcers, however, denied picking him up. Top Awami League leaders also refuted the allegations and claimed BNP Chairperson Khaleda Zia might have asked Salahuddin, also a former state minister, to go into hiding.

There was no trace of Salahuddin since then.

Meanwhile, Rab Director General Benazir Ahmed said if India hands over Salahuddin to Bangladesh, he would face trial for involvement in petrol bomb attacks that took many lives during the BNP-led alliance's blockade and hartal since January.

Terming the BNP leader one of the masterminds of petrol bomb attacks, the Rab boss said, “We would interrogate the BNP leader to find out where and in what condition he had been.”

Benazir made the comments at a press conference at the Rab-7 headquarters in Chittagong, reports our correspondent in the port city.

The Rab boss said they came to know about Salahuddin's whereabouts through the media.

Asked about Khaleda's allegation that Rab had kept Salahuddin in its custody, he said, “If a responsible person of an old political party tries to malign an agency of the state without any proof, it is morally unacceptable. People will judge it.”

Referring to Salahuddin's admission to a mental hospital in Shillong, he said, “If a big party gives responsibility to a mentally impaired person and if he flees failing to discharge his duties, how logical it is to hold the state or any agency responsible for that?”

“It is time to see whether he went to India legally.” According to the Indian law, Salahuddin would face lawsuits if he had trespassed into that country.

Meantime, AL Presidium Member Mohammad Nasim said Salahuddin's phone conversation with his wife proves that the BNP lied all along.

"Begum Zia claimed Salahuddin was in Rab custody. Now his wife is saying he is in Meghalaya ... They were claiming that he had been abducted. But now it is proved that he had gone somewhere on his own," said Nasim, the health minister.

"The BNP always resorts to lies. The party wanted to mislead people by saying that Salahuddin had been abducted. But such falsehood could not deceive people," Nasim told reporters after a meeting of the AL-led 14-party alliance at the AL chief's Dhanmondi office.