Shillong, Feb 15: He spent nearly a decade fighting a charge of entering India illegally and from those depths Salahuddin Ahmed has risen again to the position of MP in Bangladesh after winning the Cox’s Bazar-1 seat in the neighbouring country’s recent general election.
Salahuddin, of the victorious Bangladesh National Party (BNP), grabbed headlines recently after he called on India to send former Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina back to Bangladesh where she has been sentenced to death in absentia for crimes committed in 2024 as revolution gripped the country.
Salahuddin mysteriously turned up in Golf Links here in May 2015. At first, the police had no idea of his identity as he was unable to provide coherent answers to their questions. Reports from that time describe how Salahuddin was taken to a mental hospital for suspected mental illness. It was only two days later that the authorities realised that they had a high-profile politician in their midst and Shillong thus became the centre of a web of international political intrigue.
He was arrested and charged under the Foreigners Act 1946 for entering India illegally. Salahuddin, his family and the BNP claimed that he had been kidnapped from his home two months prior by Hasina’s forces and spirited over the border before being set loose in Shillong. In 2018 he was acquitted but the prosecution appealed. However, the appeal was unsuccessful.
Although the acquittal was upheld in 2023, Salahuddin only returned to his native land the following year once Hasina had been toppled.
Not only did he see a way back to his country but also a path back into Parliament; he had previously represented Cox’s Bazar-1 from 1996 to 2006 and was a close aide of Khaleda Zia of the BNP, who had also risen to the post of PM. It is Zia’s son Tarique Rahman who now leads the BNP and is poised to be the new PM.
The new Bangladesh cabinet will be sworn-in on Tuesday. As a faithful supporter of the BNP, Salahuddin could land a post in the cabinet, which would really be a turnaround for the incoherent man found wandering around Golf Links one chilly morning.
