Relatives cook food for Khaleda on Eid-ul-Fitr

Relatives have brought home-cooked food for BNP Chairperson Khaleda Zia in jail on the Eid day.

The former prime minister usually eats lunch by 1:30pm, but she had to wait longer on Saturday as the jail authorities set her meeting with her relatives at 2pm.

Her late brother Sayeed Eskandar’s widow Nasrin Eskandar and sons Shams Eskandar and Shafin Eskandar, younger brother Shamim Eskandar, his wife Kaniz Fatema and sons Obhik Eskandar, Eric Eskandar, and six other nephews and nieces of Khaleda entered the old jailhouse on Nazimuddin Road around 2:15pm.

Tarique Rahman’s sister-in-law Shahina Khan Zaman Bindu and her husband, the BNP chief’s personal secretary ABM Abdus Sattar and house helps were also among the 20 people who met Khaleda in jail.

After they left the jailhouse around 4:40pm, they said jailors tested the food they brought for Khaleda.

They greeted Khaleda with flowers and the BNP chief hugged them.

As the relatives got emotional, Khaleda asked them to be “patient and have faith in Allah”, they said.

They also said she enquired about all of her relatives, especially the children.

Two officials escorted her to the room prepared for the meeting.

The jail authorities said they gave Khaleda vermicelli milk pudding, Jorda and sweets for breakfast on the Eid day as a first-class prisoner.

They also cooked lunch for her, but she ate the food cooked by her relatives.

Khaleda had earlier spent two Eids in a special jail set up at a building in the parliament compound when she was arrested during the 2007-08 military-controlled caretaker government. Sheikh Hasina, now the prime minister, was also kept in another building in the same area at the time.

Khaleda has been leading the BNP since the assassination of her husband and president Ziaur Rahman in 1981. She was elected prime minister and leader of the opposition in around four decades of her political career.

Courts ordered Khaleda’s arrest in different cases though she has secured bail in the Zia Orphanage Trust graft case in which she was sentenced to five years in prison.

Police strengthened security surrounding the jail in the morning as the BNP announced that its senior leaders and activists in Dhaka would head toward the jailhouse to meet their chief.

The BNP policymakers filed an application seeking permission to meet her on the Eid day, but the authorities rejected the plea and police barred the leaders from meeting her on their way to the jail.