The Jatiya Party chairman, HM Ershad, who was picked up by people of an intelligence agency on December 12 and was admitted to Combined Military Hospital, is likely to be sent to a hospital abroad, party leaders and the family told New Age on Tuesday night.
‘Passports of four people, including that of Ershad and his son Erik Ershad, were collected from [Ershad’s] house at Baridhara on Thursday. At least seven luggage were also taken from the house,’ a member of the family said. ‘Sir [Ershad] might be sent to Singapore or Thailand for treatment anytime although he is fine both at home and in Combined Military Hospital before and after his admission to hospital.’
Ershad’s younger brother GM Qader told reporters on Friday that Ershad had been fit but he was picked up from the house and admitted to the CMH. The Jatiya Party’s secretary general ABM Ruhul Amin Hawlader said that he along with party leaders and activists were passing a bad time and everything would be disclosed at a favourable time in future.
A government agency has, meanwhile, allegedly forced Bobby Hajjaj, special adviser to Ershad, to leave the country on Monday night.
‘I was forced to leave the country,’ a staff of the Jatiya Party’s research and strategy wing which Hajjaj heads, quoted Hajjaj as telling him over phone from London in the evening.
He said that the government agency had also forced the party to shut down the research wing.
Earlier on Saturday, Rapid Action Battalion personnel picked up Hajjaj and forced him to withdraw all political statements he had made on behalf of Ershad at a press conference that day.
In the press briefing, Hajjaj claimed that Ershad had informed him that he had not been ill and had been forcibly taken to the CMH, Dhaka by a government intelligence agency and iterated his stance about not joining the parliamentary polls scheduled for January 5.
-With New Age input
