PM to go slow against Priya Saha

Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina has not approved the quick attempt of government to book Priya Saha with sedition charges ahead of obtaining her explanation about her blasting comments during an interaction with US president Donald Trump, ruling Awami League party general secretary and road transport minister Obaidul Quader said on Sunday.

“The Prime Minister last night sent me a message saying no legal action was required to be initiated hastily,” Quader told a media briefing at the party’s Dhanmondi office, state-run Bangladesh Sangbad Sangstha news agency report said.  

He added Saha must make a public statement explaining what she actually wanted to tell Trump.

Quader said Liberation War Affairs Minister AKM Mozammel Haque was set to lodge a sedition case against Saha but he already conveyed the premier’s message and talked to law minister Anisul Huq and home minister Asaduzzaman Khan Kamal in this regard.

Quader had previously said that Saha should be given a chance to explain herself. He also termed Saha's remarks as "absolutely false."

The foreign ministry suspected that she was led by an “ulterior motive” while the home minister said “we will certainly ask her (about the remarks) when she returns” from the United States.

The law minister, meanwhile, said Saha made utterly false allegation to gratify her personal desires and she should be ignored but “I think we should not give so much importance to this Priya Saha”.

“We should highlight the truth and ignore her. I think it is not right to term such small matters as ‘seditious offence’, but it is up to judiciary and judges to decide,” he told newsmen on the sidelines of the opening ceremony of a judges training programme.

When asked about chances of any group’s backing behind such blatant lies against the country, the law minister said it was not an impossible proposition but it was matter of investigation.

Meanwhile, Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina's ICT Affairs Adviser and son Sajeeb Wazed Joy has slammed the US Embassy in Dhaka for picking Priya Biswas Saha, who blamed in front of US President Donald Trump that 37 million Hindus, Buddhists and Christians had disappeared from Bangladesh.

“US Embassy is the one that had an ulterior motive here. They picked Priya Saha because they knew she would make this outrageous statement,” Joy said in his official facebook page on Sunday.

An organising secretary of the Bangladesh Hindu Buddhist Christian Unity Council (HBCUC), Saha attended a meeting at the White House in Washington DC recently and a video of the meeting with Trump subsequently went viral on social media and sparked widespread controversy back home.

In the video Saha was seen identifying herself as a Bangladeshi and telling Trump that 37 million people of minority groups disappeared from Bangladesh.

HBCUC, meanwhile, tended to disown Saha’s comments with one of its senior leaders saying the comments she made were of her own and she did not represent the Council in the meeting with the US President.

But he said compared to previous governments of Bangladesh, the incumbent one of Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina was “much more minority-friendly, and we (minorities) want to live here amid harmony”.

Kamruzzaman