BNP Chairperson Khaleda Zia is “willing to travel abroad to receive advanced medical treatment if she gets bail”, a MP of the party has said after meeting her.
Published : 01 Oct 2019, 07:41 PM
Joint Secretary General Md Harunur Rashid was among three BNP MPs who met her on Tuesday at the BSMMU hospital.
She is undergoing treatment at the government facility under the supervision of the jail authorities.
“I urge the government not to deprive her of her ethical right to get bail,” he said.
“Of course she will go abroad for treatment if she gets the opportunity,” the MP said when a reporter asked whether she wanted to go overseas for treatment.
“She will go abroad tomorrow if she gets bail today. And her first priority will be to get treatment,” he added.
The two other MPs who accompanied Harun were Abdus Sattar Bhuiyan and Md Aminul Islam.
The party alleges that Khaleda has been wrongly convicted of corruption, for which she has been serving altogether 17 years in jail since February last year.
It blames the government for her incarceration terming it a plot to keep her away from politics and elections.
Of late, her party has been alleging that the ruling Awami League is out to deny her bail.
The media have published reports over Khaleda’s possible trip abroad.
A recent such report over her “imminent parole” had irked BNP Secretary General Mirza Fakhrul Islam Alamgir, who had said the party chief would never agree to her release under any condition.
Harun also said the government has not made any proposal on her parole. “Why does the question of parole arise? She is eligible to get bail,” he said.
He and five other leaders of the BNP joined parliament amid differences of opinions among the party and its allies over whether their MPs-elect should take oath after the “votes were rigged”.
Asked, Harun said there had been “no compromise” with the government on their joining parliament.
He said they did so to push for Khaleda’s release.
“As the chief (of the BNP Parliamentary Party), I’ve spoken at some places in the top tier of the government; I’ve demanded her release. They avoided the issue saying it is merely a legal matter,” the BNP MP said.
Tears streamed down his face and the two other MPs mopped their eyes when he described the condition of the three times former prime minister.
“She is very much ill. She cannot even eat and wear clothes using her hands. Her hands tremble.
“How inhumane it is to keep her in jail in this condition! It is torture!” Harun said.
“When the wider image is getting out through the so-called crackdown on corruption, raids on casinos, our three times former prime minister is not even being given bail after she is jailed in case over false (embezzlement) charges of Tk 20 million. What an injustice!”