Staff Reporter :
Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) on Thursday alleged that its Chairperson Begum Khaleda Zia had been taken to prison illegally as the doctors did not release her from the Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujib Medical University (BSMMU).
The government cannot take Khaleda to prison without doctors’ consultation. But the BSMMU Director arranged everything to transfer Khaleda Zia, Secretary General of BNP Mirza Fakhrul Islam Alamgir said, while talking to the reporters on the gates of the old central jail on the Nazimuddin Road.
BNP Standing Committee Member Nazrul Islam Khan has labelled the move as “inhumane.”
“She needs more treatment. Doctors have said that she will become paralysed in absence of proper treatment. Yet, they’ve taken her to the prison,” he said.
He was addressing a discussion programme at Jatiya Press Club, with condemnation of the move and demanded resumption of Khaleda’s treatment. Meanwhile, BNP Senior Joint-Secretary General Ruhul Kabir Rizvi said, Khaleda Zia was shifted to jail again violating the High Court’s directive for her treatment and the recommendations of the medical board as part of the government’s ‘dangerous plot’.
“The government is playing a indecent game with Khaleda Zia’s life. The initiative to send her to jail when she is undergoing medical tests is regrettable and unwanted,” he said.
He said it in a press briefing at BNP’s Nayapaltan central office.
The BNP leader said that Syed Atiqul Haq, who is giving treatment, did not issue her ‘discharge certificate. Moreover the Medical Board Chairman Prof Abdul Jalil Chowdhury is now abroad.
“Under the circumstances, the law enforcers forced the medical team to issue the discharge certificate. The government’s plot for putting Begum Zia’s life at stake or crippling her forever without giving her treatment is the manifestation of the government’s disgusting mentality,” Rizvi alleged.
He also said the government does not want Khaleda to be cured, rather it is trying to remove her from politics by risking her life. ‘It also exposes the vindictive attitude of the government.’
The BNP leader said the government has indulged in a game of revenge with Khaleda Zia to force the opposition to join the staged-managed election.
‘The government has snatched her rights to treatment. We strongly protest and condemn the sending of our leader to jail from the hospital without completing her treatment,’ he added.
The BNP leader warned that history would not pardon them if they endanger Khaleda’s life.
The former Prime Minister was taken to a makeshift court in the old Central Jail from Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujib Medical University on Thursday and produced her there for hearing on Niko graft case.
A black SUV carrying Khaleda reached the old central jail in the capital’s Nazimuddin Road around 11:40 am and she will be kept there, according to jail sources.
Khaleda Zia was in the erstwhile Dhaka Central Jail on the Nazimuddin Road since she was sentenced to five years’ imprisonment in the Zia Orphanage Trust corruption case on February 8.
On October 6, she was admitted to the BSMMU after prison authorities shifted her there from old Dhaka Central jail for better treatment in response to a court order.
