Dhaka: Thousands of people joined the funeral prayers as Bangladeh National Party (BNP) chief and ex-prime minister Khaleda Zia’s self-exiled younger son, Arafat Rahman Koko, was buried in Dhaka on Tuesday, hours after his body arrived amid political turbulence.
Khaleda gave her younger son an emotional send off touching his face in the coffin as his funeral prayer was held at the Baitul Mokarram National Mosque ahead of the burial at a municipal graveyard at Banani in the capital.
Koko, who all through preferred to stay away from politics, died of a heart attack three days ago in Malaysia where he was living for the past seven years. Authorities earlier enforced tight security to pre-empt violence in the capital as 45-year-old Koko’s wife and two daughters accompanied the body back to Bangladesh.
Koko’s sudden death came as his mother spearheads a massive campaign against her arch-rival, Prime Minister Shaikh Hasina, with her Bangladesh BNP-enforced nationwide blockade passed the 22nd day on Tuesday.
Two more fresh deaths overnight took the toll to 37, nearly half of them occurring in arson attacks on transport like buses amid reports of sporadic violence continuing to dominate the media headlines.
Both the latest two victims were truck drivers who succumbed to their burn injuries early Tuesday morning at two state-run hospitals in the capital and northwestern Rangpur, days after suspected blockaders attacked their vehicles with petrol bombs.
Senior BNP leaders, preferring anonymity, said they planned to request Khaleda to invite Hasina to attend Koko’s funeral prayers later this week as the premier earlier failed to meet her arch-rival to condole with her as she was declined entry to her office.
“We will request madam [Khaleda] to invite the Prime Minister to attend but the decision will be taken by her,” an unnamed BNP leader told the Dhaka Tribune.
Hours after Koko’s death, Hasina, along with senior leaders of her ruling Awami League, went to Khaleda’s Gulshan office but the gates were locked from inside and none of the BNP chief’s aides came to receive the premier as she got off her car and waited for a few minutes.
The incident sparked widespread controversies prompting several BNP leaders to admit it was an “indecent act” on the part of Khaleda’s aide who earlier claimed the shocked ex-premier was asleep under the influence of sedatives when Hasina came.
Khaleda’s elder son, Rahman, now lives in London, visibly to evade trials in a number of graft and criminal charges, one for allegedly masterminding a grenade attack on a rally of the now ruling Awami League in which 24 people were killed in 2004 while Hasina narrowly survived.
Koko, also the son of BNP’s founder and military ruler turned politician slain president Zia-ur-Rahman, was known for his passion for sports and generosity while he preferred to maintain a low profile.
Koko, however, was arrested in September 2007 on graft charges under emergency rules during the past army-backed interim regime and was paroled for treatment abroad in July 2008.
After trial in absentia, he later was convicted and jailed for six years, a term he never served.
Koko first went to Thailand and then moved to Malaysia while he met his mother last in 2012 during a tour in Singapore.
But the whole family could not be together since 2007.
