Ershad hospitalised

Special Envoy to the Prime Minister HM Ershad has been hospitalised. The Jatiya Party (JP) chief, who was scheduled to attend the party’s Sunamganj chapter convention on Wednesday, has been taken to the Combined Military Hospital (CMH) in Dhaka. “He had complained of knee problems on Tuesday evening and was admitted to the hospital,” Ershad’s press secretary Sunil Shubha Roy has said. Meanwhile, the convention of Sunamganj district unit of JP has been postponed. “Party Secretary General Ziauddin Ahmed Bablu informed about the JP Chairman’s illness on Tuesday. The new date will be announced after he (Ershad) recovers,” said Sunamganj JP’s Convener Pir Fazlur Rahman. The former military ruler, who turned 85 on March this year, regularly flies to Singapore for health check-ups. But he has not been admitted to a Bangladesh hospital in the last eighteen months after he was ‘confined’ in December 2013 ahead of the Jan 5 national elections. At that time, the Rapid Action Battalion (RAB) had escorted Ershad to the hospital from his home. JP leaders had then alleged that he was picked up by law-enforcers as he ‘didn’t want to take part in the polls’ while the RAB said that Ershad was taken to the hospital as he was ill, according to bdnews24.com.