Salahuddin says Sheikh Hasina caused his ‘enforced disappearance’ from Bangladesh to Shillong
Shillong, Aug 6:The opposition Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) leader Salahuddin Ahmed, who is currently camping here, accused the ousted Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina of his ‘enforced disappearance’ from Bangladesh.
“People of Bangladesh strongly believe that Sheikh Hasina made enforced disapperance. Many others were not lucky to survive, luckily I am still alive”, he told reporters on Tuesday.
Salahuddin, who landed up in Shillong in 2015, faced trial for illegal entry but was free to go after he was acquitted in 2018.
However, the process was delayed following an appeal by the authorities against his release but on February 28 this year, the court of the additional deputy commissioner, Shillong upheld the 2018 order of acquittal of Salahuddin by the first class judicial magistrate.
He went ‘missing’ in March 2015 from Bangladesh only to be found in Shillong after two months. His statement was that he was kidnapped and the abductors blindfolded him and dumped in Golf Links, Polo.
Commenting on the resignation and escape of former prime minister Sheikh Hasina, Salahuddin said, “That was her fate as she resorted to misrule for three consecutive terms with flawed elections and there was absence of rule of law”.
The situation prevailing in Bangladesh is something like the mass revolution led by the students’ movement’, he said.
Salahuddin said the opposition parties met the President of Bangladesh who agreed to have an interim government to hold neutral Parliament elections.
According to Salahuddin, who was a former minister and BNP secretary, their leader Begum Khaleda Zia needs immediate treatment and that is the party’s priority.
He hopes to return to Dhaka shortly especially in view of the ‘positive’ development favouring his party.
He had served as the assistant private secretary to Khaleda Zia when she was the Prime Minister in 1991.
Salahuddin was accommodated as the state minister of communication from 1996 to 2006. As a member of parliament, he represented Cox’s Bazar-1 constituency. He had also functioned as joint general secretary and spokesperson of the BNP.
