Prime minister Sheikh Hasina has said that if Bangladesh Nationalist party chairperson Khaleda Zia wants to go abroad for treatment, she has to return to jail and seek permission from the court.

‘Again she [Khaleda] has to return to jail and go to court. She has to take permission from the court,’ the prime minister, now in the United States, said in an interview with Voice of America that aired on its website on Saturday.

In response to a question about the government’s position about Khalada’s treatment abroad, Hasina said, ‘I ask which country in the world has been able to send a convict abroad for treatment. Will any country do that? If they [Khaleda’s family and the BNP] want, they have to go to court. Permission must be obtained from the court. We have no scope to interfere in the function of any court.’

She also said, ‘But yes, what I have been able to do for her, that is, as far as I have the executive power, I have suspended her sentence and given her permission to stay at home. She is now undergoing treatment on her own at the most expensive hospital in Bangladesh.’

Khaleda Zia is undergoing treatment at Evercare Hospital in Dhaka for 52 days.

On September 25, Khaleda’s brother Shamim Iskander submitted an application to the home ministry seeking permission to send the former prime minister abroad for better treatment.

The 78-year-old leader has been suffering from various ailments, including liver cirrhosis, arthritis, diabetes, kidney, lung, heart, and eye problems.

Since her conditional release in 2020, the BNP chief has been receiving treatment at the hospital under a medical board headed by cardiology professor Shahabuddin Talukder.

On August 9, Khaleda was admitted to Evercare Hospital after falling seriously ill at her Gulshan house Feroza following on advice of her medical board.

Khaleda was sent to the Old Dhaka Jail after a lower court sentenced her to five years’ imprisonment in the Zia Orphanage Trust case on February 8, 2018. Later, she was found guilty in another case in the same year.

Amid the Covid pandemic, the government temporarily released Khaleda Zia from jail through an executive order suspending her sentence on March 25, 2020, with the condition that she would stay at her Gulshan house and would not leave the country.