WE share the general relief at the news that BNP leader Salahuddin Ahmed, who has been missing for the last two months, is alive. With the continued denial of authorities that he had been detained by them the public had begun to fear for his life. The fact that he has now emerged, quite out of the blue in the capital of the north-eastern Indian state of Meghalaya,s triggers a number of questions. Precisely how does a leading member of the opposition party and a former state minister simply disappear? Who held him in captivity? How did he end up in a neighbouring state? Given that there have been disappearances of other political figures, with no clue as to their whereabouts even now, Salahuddin's case has brought to the fore the ease with which certain groups can pick up people and make them disappear in total defiance of the existing law. 

The typical reaction of the authorities is to deny having anything to do with the disappearance and then claim that they are 'investigating the matter'.
The government is obliged to make a full statement clarifying the circumstances in which Salahuddin was abducted and then presumably set free. The mystery of Salauddin's case needs to be completely unearthed.