It remains a mystery as people are still in the dark about where Nagorik Oikya Convener Mahmudur Rahman Manna had been for long 20 hours since the midnight of Tuesday.
Law enforcers too have given no satisfactory answer to the question about Manna’s disappearance for those long hours.
Manna was handed over to Gulshan police around 12:25am yesterday by Rapid Action Battalion (RAB).
People identifying themselves as detective officials picked Manna up from the residence of his niece at Banani around 3:30am on Tuesday, said his family members.
Around 2pm on Tuesday, Manna’s family filed a GD with the Banani police station alleging that some people, who identified themselves as law enforcers, took him away.
Manna’s sister-in-law Sultana Begum said in the GD that six to seven people identifying themselves as DB police took Manna away around 3:30am from her Banani residence.
Later, Meher Nigar told reporters that her husband went to his cousin’s house in Banani out of fear that he might be arrested. Police in plain clothes took him away without producing any arrest warrant, she said.
However, Commander Mufti Mahmud Khan, director of legal and media wing of RAB, said they had arrested Manna from in front of a restaurant in the capital’s Dhanmondi area between 10:30pm and 11pm on Tuesday night.
But the officials did not say anything about the 20 hours Manna had been missing.
Monirul Islam, joint commissioner of DB police, yesterday at a briefing said RAB handed over Manna to them after they picked him up from Dhanmondi area.
As he was asked about the complaint of Manna’s family that he was taken away by some people identifying themselves as law enforcers, Monirul said they had no answer to the question.
“A GD was filed in this connection by his family members and once investigation is over we would be able to know about where he actually was at that time,” said the joint commissioner.
On Monday, after the conversations got leaked, Manna expressed fears that he might be arrested any time. So he took refuge at a relative’s house and that is where he had been picked up from, alleged Manna’s wife Meher Nigar.
Manna’s two telephonic conversations were made available on the internet on Monday by a number of online news portals.
One of them was with senior BNP leader and ex-Dhaka mayor Sadeque Hossain Khoka – who is now in the US – and the other with an unknown person.
Manna told Khoka that a few deaths in police or criminal action would not matter if Dhaka University students could be involved with the movement for toppling the government.
He suggested that if the BNP could engineer the take-over of some DU halls of residence in a confrontation, that it would shake the government.
In the other conversation, he seems to have hinted that he is ready to talk with army officers if they were to seek his opinion about remedying the prevailing political crisis.
Manna admitted that he had had these conversations but claimed that he had been misinterpreted.
Several leaders of the ruling Awami League – of which he is a former organising secretary – demanded his arrest on sedition charges.
Mahmudur Rahman Manna, along with eminent lawyer Dr Kamal Hossain, has been campaigning for a political dialogue between the Awami League and BNP to resolve the prevailing political stalemate.
