Bangladesh News Desk: Tahsina Rushdi, wife of disappeared BNP leader Ilias Ali, on Monday claimed she is certain that the members of the law enforcement agency picked up her husband.
And the text message she received from the prime minister’s office (PMO), inviting her to meet the PM to assure that Ilias Ali would be brought back, was nothing but a show-off.
She said she was called from the PMO in a bid to foil the five-day long strike the BNP had been observing at that time demanding the BNP leader Ilias Ali be traced and returned to the family.
Tahsina Rushdi came up with these remarks on Monday while attending a discussion titled ‘Bring the disappeared people, including Ilias Ali, back’ at a hotel in the capital’s Gulshan with BNP secretary general Mirza Fakhrul Islam Alamgir in the chair.
The former BNP organising secretary Ilias Ali and his driver Ansar Ali were picked up from the capital on 17 April in 2012. The police later recovered the abandoned vehicle.
BNP called a five-day long hartal between 22 April and 30 April demanding Ilias Ali and his driver be traced and brought back. From a press conference on 30 April 2012, Tahsina wanted to meet the prime minister Sheikh Hasina. Two days after the briefing she accompanied by her children called on the PM on 2 May.
In the discussion, she said, “While the people were observing the strike, someone from the PMO sent me a text message, inviting me to meet the PM. After receiving the message, I called on the PM and she assured me that she would try her level best to trace him (Ilias Ali).”
As the days passed, she realised that the effort the PM made was just a show-off. It was done to thwart the BNP’s movement, Tahsina added.
Tahsina said, “There were security guards and the coconut sellers surrounding my house at Road no. 2 in the capital’s Banani. A police official was also present at the place when he [Ilias Ali] was picked up. While the police officer approached the vehicle, he was shown an identity card of a law enforcement agency.”
Recounting the bitter experience of the past 10 years, she said, “The government has fixed an identity for us that we are the members of missing family. As a member of that family, wherever we go in the country, people don’t want to talk to us out of fear.”
Tahsina alleged, “The enforced disappearance is being carried out as per the government’s plan. The qualified persons and the active [political] activists were the victims of enforced disappearance to convey a message that ‘you have to stop’. The government has created a terrifying atmosphere through this way so that nobody can take part in the movement, and express their views against the government.”
