DB held me over a single word: Sumash Tech CEO recounts 15-hour illegal detention
“They did not torture me, but the trauma remains. DB is following the same old pattern, picking people up at midnight. They could have called me during the day. I would have gone,” Piash said
Abu Sayeed Piash, chief executive officer of Sumash Tech, has said he was picked up by the Detective Branch (DB) over a single word — "against" — used in the invitation for a scheduled press conference on mobile phone registration.
He described his 15-hour detention as an attempt to muzzle their voice and warned that DB must not return to "the dark days of the Hasina era".
In an interview with The Business Standard this morning (20 November), Piash recounted the events that unfolded from late Tuesday night.
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"They later admitted they picked me up only because of one word - against," Piash said.
"In the press invitation, we wrote that we would speak against certain aspects of the process. They misunderstood this as opposition to the entire system. We were not against the NEIR process. We only had recommendations," said Piash, who is also the general secretary of Mobile Business Community, Bangladesh (MBCB).
The midnight knock
Piash said he usually goes to bed late and was preparing for the next day's much-anticipated press conference when he heard that journalist Mizanur Rahman Sohel, who was coordinating the event, had been picked up at around 12:30am.
"I asked myself why he had been detained. Then I realised they might come for me. And that is exactly what happened," he said.
Around 3am, several men wearing DB jackets arrived at his Mirpur residence.
"They hit my driver. I got a call from his phone. They said my driver had done something wrong, and I needed to come down to the parking area. I immediately understood this was the old DB tactic to lure someone out of their home."
When he reached the parking area, the officers kept asking for the home address of his organisation's president, an elderly man. They tracked his son's mobile phone and went to the president's Basabo residence, but he was not there.
"They kept saying, 'Find your president, then we will let you go.' As he wasn't home, they took me to the Minto Road DB office around 5am."
'They didn't know why I was picked up'
According to Piash, no senior official was initially present.
"DB Additional Commissioner Shafiqul Islam had already left around 3am after interrogating Mizanur Rahman Sohel. I kept asking why I had been picked up. They said, 'We don't know. We only know we were asked to bring you here. The order came from the top. Our boss [DB Additional Commissioner Shafiqul Islam] was called from the upper levels of the interim government', though he declined to name them."
"Later I talked to DB Additional Commissioner Shafiqul Islam. He told me, 'Our intelligence suggested you could create unrest in the name of a press conference.' But he also said our demands were logical. Business should not be monopolised," he added.
"They didn't beat me, but they misbehaved with the journalist during questioning," Piash added.
By 10:30am, he said, DB officials realised they had made a mistake and released Sohel.
Piash's phones had been seized, preventing him from contacting family or colleagues.
Crowds gather outside DB office
"Before arriving at the DB office, I informed my community members. Some reached by 3:10am. Many detectives were surprised, asking why so many people were gathering there," he said.
Later in the afternoon, between 3:30pm and 4pm, DB allowed several community representatives inside.
"They had two options ready for me: if the higher-ups told them to release me they would have me sign a white paper, or they would present me in court after framing me in some case," he said adding they released him after having him sign a white paper.
Piash said his wife went to several police stations to file a General Diary (GD), but officers refused to take it.
"Why wouldn't they file a GD? Why wouldn't they disclose that I had been picked up? If you have the courage, make it public when you detain someone," Piash said.
DB officially acknowledged his detention only after 2:30pm.
He was released around 6pm after 15 hours of detention.
"They did not torture me, but the trauma remains. DB is following the same old pattern, picking people up at midnight. They could have called me during the day. I would have gone," Piash added.
"What they got wrong was a single word, 'against'. And for that, they tried to silence us. This should not happen in the post-uprising era."
"Do not take DB back to the dark days. That era must not return," he concluded.
