Sheikh Hasina, the Awami League President and five-time Prime Minister, has dismissed claims that BNP leader Salahuddin Ahmed was a victim of enforced disappearance.
In a recent audio message, she stated: โThey accuse me of enforced disappearances and murders. Whom have I killed? Should militants, killers, and arsonists not face arrest and imprisonment?โ
Addressing Salahuddinโs allegations directly, she noted that he was in India and had obtained a travel document there. โDoes that mean I sent him to India? If so, heโs fortunate I ensured he was well cared for there,โ she remarked sarcastically.
On June 3, Salahuddin, a BNP Standing Committee member, filed a complaint with the International Crimes Tribunal (ICT-BD), accusing seven individuals, including Sheikh Hasina and former Home Minister Asaduzzaman Khan Kamal. The other accused are former police chiefs AKM Shahidul Haque and Benazir Ahmed, former army official Major General Ziaul Ahsan, former DMP chief Asaduzzaman Mia, and former CTTC unit head Monirul Islam.
Salahuddin, a former junior civil servant, served as assistant private secretary to BNP chief Khaleda Zia during her 1991โ96 term as prime minister.
He later resigned from government service, became an MP from Coxโs Bazar, and served as state minister for telecommunications from 2001 to 2006. His wife, Hasina Ahmed, is also a former MP.
Disappearance and reappearance
On March 10, 2015, Salahuddin, then BNPโs spokesperson and joint secretary general, disappeared from Uttara. His wife alleged that law enforcement agencies had detained him and taken him to an undisclosed location.
The BNP accused the Awami League government and an intelligence agency from a neighbouring country of orchestrating his abduction. However, on May 11, 2015, Salahuddin was found in Shillong, India.
Local police in Shillong detained him, charging him under Indiaโs Foreigners Act for illegal entry. Formal charges were filed in a lower court on July 22, 2015. Although he was acquitted in 2018, the Indian government appealed, requiring him to remain in the country.
After a prolonged legal battle, the Shillong Judge Court in Meghalaya upheld the lower court’s verdict of acquittal on February 28, 2023, enabling his return to Bangladesh. He got the travel pass in June the same year.
On June 8, a Bangladesh Foreign Ministry spokesperson said that Salahuddin can return home anytime he wants as the government has approved his travel back to Bangladesh. Earlier, the Home Ministry approved Salahuddin’s application for returning home.
He eventually returned to Bangladesh on August 11, 2024, and filed a complaint about his disappearance on October 15.
After Salahuddinโs reappearance in Shillong, critics of the Awami League began accusing the government of orchestrating his abduction.
During this period, Muhammad Yunus, who was covertly opposing the government after his removal from Grameen Bank, claimed in a phone call with Bangladesh Kalyan Party Chairman Maj Gen (Retd) Syed Muhammad Ibrahim that Indiaโs external intelligence agency, RAW, had abducted Salahuddin from Bangladesh.
Meanwhile, the Awami League insisted that the political opponents, like Salahuddin, Farhad Mazhar and Mariam Mannan, staged disappearance and abduction dramas to malign the government’s image internationally.
In 2023, the Rapid Action Battalion reported that Salahuddin, while in Shillong, issued directives for sabotage during the BNPโs October 28 rally in Dhaka, where a police officer was beaten to death, and attackers vandalised the chief justiceโs residence.
Evidence of WhatsApp communications with Salahuddin was found on the phone of Abdullah Al Noman, former general secretary of the Chakaria Upazila unit of Chhatra Dal.
English
The BNP drama has become quite cheap. For a long time, they claimed that the AwamiLeague government was behind the disappearance of Elias Ali. But just a few days ago, after seizing power, the terrorists revealed to BNP leader Mirza Abbas that it was actually the BNP itself that did it.