Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) chairperson Khaleda Zia has claimed she had to call off her meeting with Indian president Pranab Mukherjee in 2013 “because of a life threat.”
“If anything happened to me (on the way to the meeting), our opponent was planning to blame Jamaat [Khaleda’s ally] for it,” Khaleda Zia told an Indian daily, The Sunday Guardian.
In an interview with the newspaper published Sunday, Khaleda also alleged the Sheikh Hasina government tried to thwart her meeting with Indian prime minister Narendra Modi.
Indian journalist Sourav Sanyal, who came here during Narendra Modi’s Bangladesh visit, interviewed the BNP chairperson at her Gulshan office just hours after she met Modi.
“Yes it is a fact that I could not meet president Pranab Mukherjee during his state visit to Bangladesh. Jamaat-e-Islami had called a general strike then to protest the conviction of its three top leaders for the 1971 war crimes. I had to call off my meeting with the president then as we received inputs that had I gone there to meet him, I would have been attacked,” Khaleda replied when she was asked why she did not meet the Indian president in 2013.
“In fact,” she continued, “there could have been a life threat. And if you recall, near his hotel at that very spot which I was supposed to cross, there was a petrol bomb explosion.”
Asked why Jamaat would have attacked her as it is an ally of the BNP-led alliance, the BNP chief said, “Had anything happened to me, the entire blame would have been pinned on Jamaat. And that was the game plan of our opponents, which we understood, and the meeting was called off.”
When the Indian journalist told Khaleda that to the world outside, the incident was perceived as yet another manifestation of her anti-India stand, the BNP chief alleged, “There is a concerted propaganda by the ruling government to try and paint me as anti-India and anti-Hindu.”
She went on to say, “India and Bangladesh have had very strong bonds and we recognise full well the contribution India made to our liberation. Prime Minister Modi’s visit is aimed at strengthening India-Bangladesh ties further. It suits them to project me as anti-India. There is well-oiled propaganda machinery that works relentlessly to project me and BNP as anti-India.”
Khaleda Zia claimed her meeting with Modi was “very satisfactory.”
“It was wonderful meeting Modiji. I must say the meeting was very cordial. I was very satisfied,” she added, but declined to give the details of the meeting.
Source: Prothom-Alo
