Staff Reporter :
BNP Chairperson and former Prime Minister Khaleda Zia, now undergoing treatment at Evercare Hospital in the capital, turns 80 on Thursday.
The party will arrange a milad and doa mahfil at its offices across the country, including at Nayapaltan central office, on Friday instead of Thursday to mark the day, reports UNB.
BNP senior joint secretary general Ruhul Kabir Rizvi on Tuesday said their party would hold the milad mahfils praying for the long life of Khaleda and the salvation of the departed souls of those students and mass people who embraced martyrdom during the recent movement.
He called upon the leaders and workers of all levels of BNP and its associate bodies to spontaneously participate in these programmes.
As in the last eight years, the party has no programme to cut any cake to celebrate the birthday in the early hours of her birthday.
BNP has been marking her birthdays by holding doa mahfils instead of cutting any cake since 2016.
On July 8, Khaleda Zia was admitted to Evercare Hospital in the capital six days after she had been discharged from the same hospital with various ailments.
She has been kept under close observation of doctors in a cabin at the hospital, said her personal physician Professor Dr AZM Zahid Hossain.
He said the BNP chief has been given the necessary treatment as per the advice of the medical board formed for her treatment.
Khaleda has long battled various ailments, including liver cirrhosis, arthritis, diabetes, and issues related to the kidney, lung, heart, and eyes.
Khaleda’s doctors have been recommending sending her abroad since she was diagnosed with liver cirrhosis in November 2021.
On October 26 last year, three US specialist doctors completed the hepatic procedure known as the transjugular intrahepatic portosystemic shunt (TIPS procedure) to stop water accretion in Khaleda Zia’s stomach and chest, and bleeding in her liver.
She was placed in Old Dhaka Central Jail on February 8, 2018, after a special court sentenced her to five years in prison in the Zia Orphanage Trust corruption case. On October 30, 2018, the High Court raised her punishment to 10 years. Later, she was convicted in the Zia Charitable Trust corruption case.
Amid the coronavirus outbreak, the government temporarily freed Khaleda Zia from jail after 776 days through an executive order suspending her sentence on March 25, 2020, with conditions that she would stay in her Gulshan house and not leave the country.
On August 6, Khaleda Zia was completely freed by an order of President Mohammed Shahabuddin.
The president passed the order under Article 49 of the Bangladesh Constitution, according to a gazette issued by the home ministry on August 6.
Article 49 states that “The president shall have power to grant pardons, reprieves, and respites and to remit, suspend, or commute any sentence passed by any court, tribunal, or other authority.”