Information and Broadcasting Minister Dr Hasan Mahmud on Wednesday hoped that BNP Chairperson Khaleda Zia and her party would remember the generosity that Bangabandhu's daughter and Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina was showing to her.
Terming Sheikh Hasina a generous person, he said that Bangabandhu’s daughter had repeatedly allowed the BNP chief to stay home by suspending her jail sentence.
The minister was talking to journalists after the inauguration ceremony of Wasa Sheikh Hasina Water Treatment Plant-2 project at Radisson Blu in Chittagong at noon.
Hasan, also the Awami League joint general secretary, said the BNP leaders, including its Secretary General Mirza Fakhrul Islam Alamgir, did not go to the doors of people. “Mirza Fakhrul sometimes goes to Thakurgaon and joins television programs.
"The BNP leaders don't know that the country's people are passing good times now. They don't want the people to stay happy. They are angry now as the people are in a good condition. That is why they are making falsehoods to mislead the country's people," he said.
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The government has suspended Khaleda’s sentence, handed down in two corruption cases, in phases, last time on August 27 last year.
On February 8, 2018, Khaleda was sent to the Old Dhaka Central Jail after a subordinate court sentenced her to five years imprisonment in the Zia Orphanage Trust corruption case. The High Court later doubled her jail term.
The former prime minister was found guilty in another corruption case the same year. Her party claims both cases are politically motivated.
Amid the coronavirus outbreak, the government freed Khaleda Zia from jail for six months through an executive order suspending her sentences on March 25 last year under two conditions – she would take treatment from home in Dhaka and would not go abroad during this period.
She was released from the prison cell of Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujib Medical University (BSMMU) the same day, and she has been staying at her Gulshan house since then and was taken to Evercare Hospital several times due to Covid and other health complications.
During the time, she has not appeared in any court proceedings in nearly two dozen cases on health grounds.