BNP Secretary General Mirza Fakhrul Islam Alamgir's wife, Rahat Ara Begum, has said she hopes that he will be returned home after interrogation.
"I can not believe that he was detained in this manner. I find it hard to accept. I hope that after his interrogation, the police will return him home. I expect this much from them. That is the extent of my hope. His presence there is not appropriate given his illness," she said on Sunday, hours after a team of the Detective Branch of police picked Mirza Fakhrul up from his home and took him to the DB headquarters on Minto Road in the capital.
The BNP secretary general lives on the first floor of a building in Gulshan; he moved there from Uttara for the treatment of his wife. In the morning, detectives went there with hundreds of policemen, later surrounding the building. Mirza Fakhrul's assistant Yunus Mia and a domestic help were present at the house.
Five-seven detectives then entered the veteran politician’s home, saying they wanted to talk to him. Rahat Ara Begum said they were having tea at the time. “They said, ‘Sir, we want to talk with you.’ After a while they went away, grabbing CCTV cameras of our home and those installed in the building on their way.”
“As far as I can tell they were downstairs. After 10 minutes they came again and said, ‘Sir, you have to come with us… there are orders from above.’”
Stating that Mirza Fakhrul is 75 and extremely ill, Rahat Ara questioned the manner of his detention. “[He has] severe coughs and lung problems... He received treatment in Bangladesh and even went to Singapore.”
