UNB, Dhaka: Police on Saturday night confined BNP Chairperson Khaleda Zia to her Gulshan political office, a day before her party-led 20-party’s much-hyped January-5 rally. “Madam Khaleda Zia remained confined at her office by the members of law-enforcement agencies, including police, of this illegal government,” Khaleda Zia’s Special assistant Shamsur Rahman Shimul Biswas told reporters at about 1 am. Shimul said Khaleda Zia had been at her office to discuss her alliance’s January-5 programmes with the leaders of the alliance and her party. He said Khaleda Zia came out of her office and get into her vehicle at about 11 pm to go to BNP’s Nayapaltan central office. As she took her seat in her vehicle, police intercepted the BNP chief saying that she can go nowhere. “Waiting in her vehicle for about 10 minutes, Madam returned to her office chamber,” Shimul Biswas said. At about 11.45 pm, police parked a white truck and a number of police vans indiscriminately in front of Khaleda’s office blocking the road. Huge police, including female ones, were deployed around the BNP chief’s office. Earlier, plainclothes police vacated BNP’s Nayapaltan central office and put it under lock and key after picking up its ailing joint secretary general Ruhul Kabir Rizvi and driving out 4-5 office staff. The raid was conducted, led by SI Jahangir from Paltan Police Station, around 12.30 am when some of the office staff were asleep, and they were not even allowed to put on their formal dresses. Asked why the BNP office was locked, SI Jahangir told reporters that they had an order from the higher level. Minutes before locking it, a team of Detective Branch of Dhaka Metropolitan Police picked Rizvi up from the BNP office. Khaleda Zia’s confinement and the apparent arrest of Rizvi and raid on the BNP central office came a day before the much-hyped January-5 rally of the BNP-led 20-party alliance in the capital, marking its ‘Democracy Killing Day’. The government, however, did not give BNP the permission to hold the citing reason that there might be anarchy in the city. In response to repeated queries from the journalists as to where the BNP leader was being taken, the detectives told them that Rizvi was ill and they were taking him to Square Hospitals Ltd. The BNP joint secretary general had been on saline while he was whisked away in an ambulance. Earlier around 11:40pm, a medical team, led by gastrologist Dr ASM Raihan of Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujib Medical University, arrived at the BNP office at the request of Rizvi to examine him. After a primary medical checkup, the medical team said the BNP leader was suffering from gastrological problem and nausea, and he needs a complete bed rest for a few days. Minutes after the medical team left the BNP office, the detectives entered it and told Rizvi that they had been there to take him to hospital as his health condition was not good. In response, the BNP leader was learned to have asked the DB men as to where they would like to take him to. The plainclothes police then said they preferred taking him to Square Hospitals as he would get better treatment there. But it was not clear where Rizvi was actually taken to.
