Bangladesh Nationalist Party secretary general Mirza Fakhrul Islam Alamgir on Sunday said that the party’s chairperson Khaleda Zia was sick and her pain had worsened.

The BNP secretary general told New Age that he met the chairperson on Saturday evening in her Gulshan house to inquire about her health condition.

This was the third time Fakhrul met the BNP chief after the former prime minister’s release on March 25 for six months on condition on executive order, party insiders said.

Asked about what they have discussed, the BNP secretary general said, ‘Nothing other than her health.’

‘She is sick. Her pains worsened,’ he said.

BNP vice-chairman AZM Zahid Hossain, also a physician and a member of the medical board formed for Khaleda’s treatment, told New Age that the BNP chief’s health condition was stable and she was undergoing treatment.

The doctor said that Khaleda needed advanced treatment abroad but it was not possible for the current COVID-19 situation.

‘We will have to wait until the situation improves,’ he said.

Khaleda had been in jail since February 8, 2018, the day a Dhaka court convicted her in a graft case termed false and fabricated by BNP, and was released on March 25 from Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujib Medical University prison cell where she had been undergoing treatment for her multiple health complications, including diabetes mellitus, hypertension, cough-variant asthma and rheumatoid arthritis with secondary sjogren’s syndrome with bilateral total knee replacement.

The government suspended her convictions in two cases for six months on conditions that she would take medical treatment staying at her home and she would not leave the country.