BNP leader Salahuddin Ahmed’s wife Hasina Ahmed has decided to seek help from Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina to get back her husband, who has been missing for the last eight days.
“These are suffocating days for my family. I do not know how my children are passing the days without their father. I will submit an application to the prime minister soon to get back my husband,” Hasina, a former lawmaker, told reporters at her residence yesterday afternoon.
“If my husband committed any crime, produce him before the court and try him.”
In the evening, Hasina and her two children went to the BNP chief Khaleda Zia’s Gulshan office. Later she told reporters that Khaleda asked the government to release Salahuddin immediately as its law enforcers had picked him up.
Hasina also sought cooperation from people including civil society members to trace Salahuddin, allegedly been picked up on March 10 from a house in Uttara by some people who identified themselves as detectives.
Until then, Salahuddin had been issuing press statements on behalf of the party from hideout since the arrest of another Joint Secretary General Ruhul Kabir Rizvi.
Salahuddin and Hasina have two sons and two daughters. Of them, the elder son and daughter live abroad; the younger ones live with their parents.
Yesterday, a delegation of the University Teachers’ Association of Bangladesh met Salahuddin’s wife at her residence.
Expressing concern over the disappearance of Salahuddin, Yusuf Haider, former pro-VC of Dhaka University, told reporters: “I am stunned. This is not acceptable...A person remaining missing for eight days is unacceptable in a civilised country.
“We will urge the government to find him out immediately and return him to his family.”
Hasina also alleged that law enforcers had not been cordial enough to her. “In the last eight days, only a sub-inspector of the Special Branch met me.”
Former bureaucrat Salahuddin left government job to join the BNP and became a lawmaker from a Cox’s Bazar constituency. He also served as the state minister for communications.