Salahuddin's wife flies to India

Hasina Ahmed, wife of BNP leader Salahuddin Ahmed, last night left Dhaka for India to see her husband who is now being treated at Shillong Civil Hospital under police custody.

Accompanied by one of her relatives, she took a Kolkata-bound Air India flight at 9:40pm, Giasuddin Ahmed, brother of Salahuddin, told The Daily Star.

From Kolkata, they would fly to Shillong this morning, Hasina Ahmed told reporters before leaving her Gulshan residence. 

Meanwhile, Salahuddin's party colleague Abdul Latif Jony has claimed the ailing BNP joint secretary general seems to be suffering memory loss.

“While meeting him at the hospital [yesterday], I noticed he was failing to recall the incidents he had talked about some time ago and was saying same things repeatedly. He was also fumbling for words,” Jony, assistant office secretary of the BNP, told The Daily Star over the phone from Shillong.

Jony, who went to Shillong on Friday, met Salahuddin at the hospital yesterday.

He said he had talked to the hospital authorities and requested them to form a high-level medical board with specialist physicians and ensure proper treatment for him.

He also said Salahuddin burst into tears when Abdul Karim, a son of his cousin, met him yesterday.

Meghalaya police arrested Salahuddin on May 11 as he was “hanging around aimlessly” in Golf Links area of Shillong after nearly two months of his disappearance from a residence at the capital's Uttara on March 10.

Since he had no valid papers, identity proof or travel permit with him, Shillong police arrested and booked him under the Foreigners Act.

The BNP and Salahuddin's family members had been claiming that law enforcers picked him up, an allegation denied by the law enforcers and the government.

Talking to this correspondent, Jony said he found Salahuddin's two legs swelling.

Dr DJ Goswami, who is attending the BNP leader, yesterday said they had carried out various tests, including the ones on kidneys, to assess his health condition and identify his actual problems.

The doctors will work out the next course of action once they get all those test reports today, Subrata Acharjee, Kolkata correspondent of Somoy television, told The Daily Star, quoting Dr Goswami.

Meanwhile, Tabith Awal, son of Khaleda Zia's adviser Abdul Awal Mintoo and the BNP-backed mayoral candidate in the recent polls to Dhaka North City Corporation, yesterday reached Shillong to meet Salahuddin.