The High Court yesterday fixed April 15 for delivering an order on a writ petition filed over the disappearance of BNP Joint Secretary General Salahuddin Ahmed.
The bench of Justice Quamrul Islam Siddiqui and Justice Gobinda Chandra Tagore fixed the date on yesterday afternoon. In response to a time petition on Wednesday, the same bench had fixed today for hearing.
During hearing, Salahuddin’s attorneys once again requested the court to form a judicial inquiry commission to find out who had picked him up.
One of Salahuddin’s counsels Moudud Ahmed, also a standing committee member of BNP, told the court on Wednesday that members of a certain law enforcement agency had picked up Salahuddin. He also urged the court of make police’s Detective Branch (DB) a respondent of the petition.
Yesterday, he said private organisations might also be involved in whisking his client.
Once again claiming that Salahuddin was alive, Moudud said yesterday: “He is in the custody of a law enforcement agency. He is very much alive.”
On Wednesday, Moudud told reporters that he had learned from Salahuddin’s wife Hasina Ahmed that her husband was alive. However, when reporters asked Hasina about this, she denied saying anything like that to Moudud.
BNP Joint Secretary General Salahuddin Ahmed – the party’s crisis-moment communicator – was allegedly picked up by lawmen on March 10 from the Uttara residence of a relative. On March 14, police filed a general dairy with the Uttara police station in this connection.
However, Khandker Mahbub Hossain, another counsel of Salahuddin, yesterday argued that personnel from RAB had picked up his client.
He said: “Three days before abducting the BNP leader, RAB personnel picked us his driver and personal secretary who knew his whereabouts. This proves that RAB men have picked him up.”
In reply, the presiding judge said: “According to your argument, as RAB picked up the driver and PS, they have also picked up Salahuddin. But, can’t it also be that when Salahuddin came to know that RAB had picked them up and were extracting information about him, he himself went elsewhere?”
Mahbub responded that a judicial probe can find out if anything like that had happened.
On March 12, after his wife filed a petition, the HC bench asked the government and the law enforcers to explain why they should not be directed to find Salahuddin and bring him before it.
Following the order, Dhaka Metropolitan Police, Special Branch of Police, Criminal Investigation Department, Rapid Action Battalion and the Police Headquarters submitted reports to the attorney general’s office on March 15. They said they had not picked him up and were trying to trace him.
Hasina has pleaded to the prime minister several times seeking her intervention in locating her husband who has been missing for more than a month now.