Wife’s emotional reunion with Salahuddin

Hasina Ahmed, wife of BNP leader Salahuddin Ahmed, had an emotional reunion with her husband at a Shillong hospital this evening.

Journalists from Bangladesh and India who are at the hospital told The Daily Star that she stayed beside her for around half an hour.

Speaking to journalists, Hasina described the meeting as an emotional reunion between them after over two months.

Claiming that Salahuddin is ‘critically ill’, she said they are very much worried about his health condition and want to take him to a “third country” to better treatment.

Subrata Acharya, India bureau chief of Somoy TV, told The Daily Star that Hasina Ahmed entered the hospital around 8:30pm (Bangladesh Time) with two others.

After visiting her husband, she thanked the Indian government for providing her husband with shelter.

Quoting Hasina, Subrata said they talked with lawyers today and will bring them to the hospital tomorrow to meet with Salahuddin.  

Subrata also said local lawyer IC Jha has been appointed as public prosecutor [PP] for the case. Local police have served all documents to the PP, Subrata added. 

She left Dhaka last night and reached Shillong around 7:00pm (Bangladesh Time), BNP’s Assistant Office Secretary Abdul Latif Jony told The Daily Star.

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.

As he could not produce any documents and also appeared to be “mentally unbalanced”, they arrested him for trespassing and admitted him to a mental hospital. The BNP leader was later shifted to Shillong Civil Hospital.

Police filed a case against him under Section-14 of the Foreigner's Act for entering India without valid travel documents, said Meghalaya police.

It still remains unclear how and when Salahuddin, joint secretary general of the BNP, landed in Shillong.

On May 12, Salahuddin's wife Hasina Ahmed got a phone call from her husband from a hospital in Shillong. She then informed the media about it.

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.

In cases of trespass like the one involving Salahuddin, police usually send the intruder back to his home country upon court order, Vivek Syiem, superintendent of police (city) of East Khasi Hills in Indian state of Meghalaya, said on May 13.

There wouldn't be much procedural complexities in sending the arrested Bangladeshi politician back home, Syiem said.