'My husband is no criminal, why pick him up?'

Didarul Bhuiyan was not involved in any criminal acts, but he was picked up by plainclothes people who identified themselves as members of Rapid Action Battalion (RAB), said Dilshan Ara, wife of the Rashtrochinta organiser.

Didarul was allegedly picked up from his residence in Uttar Badda in Dhaka on Tuesday evening.

“He was not a criminal. Why was he picked up all of a sudden before his iftar?,” Dilshan said at a press conference held at Rashtrochinta office in the capital on Wednesday.

She said a number of people came in two black microbuses and introduced themselves as RAB members. They seized laptops and other things and said Didarul would be released after interrogation, she added.

As Rashtrochinta contacted RAB-3, they said Didarul was with RAB-1, Hasnat Quaiyum, a member of Rashtrochinta and a Supreme Court lawyer, said.

"We didn’t get any response from RAB-1 either," Hasnat added.

Police obstructed Didarul’s family as they tried to file a general diary with Badda police station, Quaiyum said.

He also said the family was finally forced to record the diary the way police dictated.

According to the statements forcefully written by police, Quaiyum said, Didarul left home and did not return since then.

He was not involved with any criminal activities, added the lawyer.

On Facebook, Didarul wrote on the relief distribution at Kurigram, Dinajpur and the post was widely shared, said Rakhal Raha, a member of Rashtrochinta. It’s suspected that he was picked up for this, Rakhal added.

Meanwhile, Mushtaq Ahmed, first Bangladeshi to commercially cultivate alligators, was allegedly picked up from Lalmatia in Dhaka on Tuesday.

Mushtaq’s wife Lipa Akter said she received a call over phone from Ramna police station on Wednesday morning. She was asked to go there.

According to sources, Mushtaq and cartoonist Ahemed Kishore were showed arrested under the Digital Security Act with Ramna police station.

Kishore posted some cartoons on coronavirus epidemic on Facebook.

None from RAB-3 were available to comment on this.