Online Desk: BNP leader Salahuddin Ahmed has gotten a travel pass to return to Bangladesh eight years after he was found in India. “I received the travel pass from Bangladesh High Commission in Guwahati yesterday (June 12),” Salahuddin, a BNP standing committee member, said. “After completing some formalities and physical check-ups in India, I will return to the country,” he added. He is currently in Shillong of India. The pass was issued on June 8.

The development came after an Indian court on October 26, 2018 acquitted him from the charges of a case filed over trespassing into the neighbouring country and directed the authorities concerned to send him to Bangladesh. The travel pass stipulates that Salahuddin will have to return to Bangladesh within the next three months.

Salahuddin, 57, who was state minister for communication in the 2001-06 BNP-Jamaat government, had gone missing from Dhaka on March 10, 2015. Three months later on May 11, he was found “hanging around” in Shillong, according to Meghalaya police.

However, after his arrest in Shillong, Salahuddin told Meghalaya police that a group of people claiming to be detectives picked him up from his Uttara house in Dhaka on March 10. He said he was taken to Shillong by an SUV, but could not say from where the car started and who were with him.

His relatives said Salahuddin was blindfolded when he was dropped off by a car in Golf Link area of Shillong. When he was missing, people feared for the life of the BNP leader while authorities had denied allegations of detaining him.

Salahuddin, who was assistant personal secretary to the then Prime Minister Khaleda Zia when BNP came to power in 1991, later left public service and joined BNP. In 2001, he was elected as a member of parliament from Cox’s Bazar. During his arrest in Meghalaya, he was joint secretary general of BNP. While in Indian jail, BNP elected him as a member of its standing committee.