BNP’s Joint Secretary General Salahuddin Ahmed was arrested by the plainclothes police on Tuesday night, Hasina Ahmed, wife of Salahuddin, who is also a former BNP MP on women’s quota, claimed on Wednesday. She said that her husband was picked up by plainclothesmen from a house in the city’s Uttara at 10:30pm on Tuesday.The law enforcers, however, did not confirm about picking up of Salahuddin. Rather, both RAB and Detective Branch of Police spokespersons have denied arresting or detaining Salahuddin.Salahuddin Ahmed has been delivering his party statements as the spokesperson of the party for more than a month after the arrest of Ruhul Kabir Rizvi Ahmed, joint secretary general of the party, from an undisclosed location after most of the senior BNP leaders were arrested. The former Cox’s Bazar MP had served as an assistant private secretary to former Prime Minister Khaleda Zia during her 1991-96 term when he was a junior civil servant.UNB adds: BNP joint secretary general Salahuddin Ahmed’s family on Wednesday claimed that law enforcers picked him up from a Uttara house on Tuesday night.”I was talking to my husband over cell phone. But, the line got disconnected unusually around 10:8pm on Tuesday. Since then, we couldn’t contact him,” the BNP leader’s wife, Hasina Ahmed, told UNB on Wednesday night.She claimed that the owner of the Uttara house where Salahuddin had been staying informed her yesterday that a joint team of Rab and plainclothes police detained Salahuddin around 1:10pm on Tuesday. “Salauddin Ahmed is not available over phone since Tuesday night. The party high command and his family members have remained out of contact with him since last night,” BNP chairperson’s media wing member Sayrul Kabir Khan told UNB.He said they fear that law enforcers might have detained Salahuddin and taken him to any an unknown place without handing him over to any police station.Deputy commissioner (Media) of DMP Masudur Rahman said the he did not have any information about the arrest of Salahuddin by law enforcement agencies.Salahuddin has been issuing statements, including those with hartal announcements, on behalf of the BNP-led 20-party alliance, since the arrest of another BNP joint secretary general Ruhul Kabir Rizvi. Party sources said Salahuddin was secretly staying at a house at sector No-3 in Uttara without his family members to evade arrest.Earlier, members of Rapid Action Battalion (Rab) arrested Rizvi from his hideout at a house at Baridhara in the city on January 30.Following Rizvi’s arrest, Salahuddin has been working as spokesperson of the alliance. He also announced the latest spell of shutdown programme in a statement on Saturday.Salahuddin issued the last statement on Tuesday accusing the government of inviting undemocratic forces into the picture by denying space for a democratic movement.In the statement, he also announced a countrywide mass procession programme of the 20-party for Thursday to press home its demands, including immediate national election under a neutral administration. Though Salahuddin issues statements every day, there had been no such statement yesterday.
