Evading the eyes of hospital authorities and law enforcers, BNP Joint Secretary General Ruhul Kabir Rizvi “fled” from the Apollo Hospitals in Dhaka in the early hours of yesterday.
Soon after Rizvi left the hospital unnoticed, hospital authorities lodged a general diary (GD) with Bhatara police station accusing the BNP leader of not paying his bills for treatment and a four-day stay there.
However, within a few hours after the GD was filed, a representative of Rizvi – who did not disclose his own name to the authority – came to the hospital and paid the dues.
Later in the afternoon, Rizvi invited some journalists to a Gulshan house, where he told them that he had walked out of the hospital “to execute his own political strategy,” which was also part of the strategy for the ongoing anti-government movement.
However, Rizvi refused to disclose details of the strategy to “all the people.”
Talking to the Dhaka Tribune, Ovijit Roy, duty manager of Apollo Hospitals, said Rizvi had “secretly” gone out of the hospital without notifying the on-duty doctors, nurses or security personnel.
“He was under treatment at gastroenterology and hepatology department under Professor M Muzibur Rahman Bhuiyan. Rizvi was being kept in a deluxe single cabin on the ninth floor at room number 3011. He was fed hospital food and he also took some laboratory tests and blood tests,” Ovijit said.
Without disclosing an exact figure, the duty manager said Rizvi’s hospital bill was within five digits.
According to the GD, filed by the hospital’s Security Executive Shah Alam, a nurse named Laboni visited Rizvi at his cabin around 12:45am and found him watching TV at the time. When she came back to check on him at 3:45am, Rizvi was not in the room anymore. Despite checking the entire hospital, Rizvi could not be found on the premises.
The doctors had reportedly asked Rizvi to rest for a few days and undergo some more tests.
Asked about the GD, Sarwar Alam, officer-in-charge of Bhatara police station, said they would talk to the hospital authority over the matter.
On Saturday night, a Detective Branch team picked up Rizvi from the BNP’s Nayapaltan headquarters; the BNP leader was ill at the time after having food brought by a Mohila Dal leader earlier in the afternoon. Rizvi was whisked away in an ambulance, with DMP Deputy Commissioner (Media) Masudur Rahman claiming that the police had not arrested Rizvi but only helped him reach the hospital.
