DHAKA: Bangladesh Prime Minister Shaikh Hasina Saturday failed to meet her grieved arch-rival Khaleda Zia for consolation as she was declined entry to her office since the ex-premier was reportedly “sleeping” under sedatives after her son’s death abroad.
The TV footages showed Hasina arriving in front of the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) chief’s upmarket Gulshan office, but the gates were not opened while she waited outside for a few minutes.
“She [Hasina] returned from the gate,” an official of the premier’s press wing briefly told newsmen as the premier’s motorcade drove away while the gate of Khaleda’s office was kept under lock from inside.
The TV camera and newsmen earlier crowded outside to cover the meeting of the two top leaders as Bangladesh’s volatile politics exposed them to extreme hostility in the past three weeks.
Minutes ahead of the premier’s arrival, Khaleda’s special assistant Shamsur Rahman Shumul Biswas, however, hinted to reporters that the BNP chief was unlikely to meet Hasina as doctors sedated her since she was not feeling well.
The premier’s office earlier said Hasina decided to visit Khaleda as her self-exiled younger son Arafat Rahman Koko died of a heart attack earlier today in Malaysia.
But Hasina’s decision to visit Khaleda came as the ex-premier’s aides told reporters she fell ill at her Gulshan office after receiving Koko’s death news at midday today.
Earlier reports said 45-year Koko died in cardiac arrest on his way to a hospital in Malaysia, where he was living for the past several years.
