Amid a row over Indian officials interrogating Bangladesh’s Prime Minister Tarique Rahman’s adviser, Zahed ur Rahman, at Delhi airport on Sunday, reports claim the adviser was allegedly using his personal passport and not a diplomatic one issued by his government.
Bangladesh had summoned India's deputy high commissioner in Dhaka to register its protest over the incident. Zahed Ur Rahman went to Delhi to attend a conference, but had to wait at the Delhi airport for hours due to immigration issues. An anti-India critic, who openly accused India of “hegemony” through his YouTube channel, which is banned in India, Zahed Ur Rahman, was in Delhi to attend the Indian Ocean Rim Association (IORA) conference.
He was also scheduled to hold several meetings at the Indian political and government levels, including on the potential visit of Bangladesh Prime Minister Tarique Rahman to India, according to Dhaka-based newspaper Prothom Alo.
Since his name was on the blacklist, considering his anti-India activities in the past, Rahman was questioned by the immigration officials in Delhi. He was later given permission to enter India after high-level meetings, which involved the Bangladesh High Commission in Delhi. But he opted to leave the country, taking a flight to Colombo in Sri Lanka. He flew to Dhaka's Shahjalal International Airport in the afternoon.
Meanwhile, Bangladeshi media reported that Zahed Ur Rahman was using the “green passport”, the country's standard ordinary passport, issued to regular citizens for general international travel, and not the diplomatic one (red or blue depending on the official stance) for the travel. Due to his status as a state minister, he is entitled to a diplomatic passport of Bangladesh.
To attend this conference, he used a SAARC sticker (known as a SAARC visa), which he obtained several years ago. The Prothom Alo report claimed that “due to the short time in Dhaka, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs had given him a SAARC visa exemption sticker for his trip to Delhi.”
However, a certain section of Bangladeshi media attributed the confusion to the passport. “The Prime Minister's advisor is supposed to have a diplomatic passport. The officials at Delhi airport are unable to understand whether he was in the country on a diplomatic or personal trip. They had to make sure of that since he was on the black list. Once they were certain of it, they did give him an immigration pass," the report added.
