Dhaka, June 28: A senior ruling Awami League leader has alleged that Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina was served “poison-mixed” food in a sub-jail where she was
detained under emergency rules during the military-backed interim government.
“She became sick in prison as she was provided with poison-mixed food,” a private television channel quoted Syeda Sajeda Chowdhury, the parliamentary deputy leader, as saying at a function in the city yesterday.
However, Chowdhury said, she had just said what was being “suspected” earlier after Hasina became sick and stopped taking food being served by jail authorities for several days at the time of her detention.
“I said this earlier also, as we heard so when she became sick,” Chowdhury said.
Hasina and her archrival Khaleda Zia of Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) were detained for nearly a year in two separate buildings declared as sub-jails at the parliamentary complex.
Both were charged with a number of graft offences as part of a massive anti-graft campaign by the interim administration that also saw the detention or imprisonment of nearly 200 high-profile people, mostly politicians.
Awami League earlier said Hasina was under intense pressure to quit politics and live in exile as part of a design dubbed by media as “minus two formula”.
–Agencies