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The main opposition Bangladesh Nationalist Party alleged on Friday that the ruling Awami League government was providing shelter to many corrupt individuals, like former army chief Aziz Ahmed and former inspector general of police Benazir Ahmed.

BNP chairperson’s advisory council member Zainul Abedin Farroque came up with the allegation at a programme arranged by Projonmo Bangladesh in front of the National Press Club to protest against the ‘illegitimate’ government’s illegal agreement with India.

‘In Bangladesh, numerous individuals are thriving under the government’s shelter. They have amassed crores of taka by plundering and making homes abroad. These people must be exposed, or the people of Bangladesh will never forgive you,’ he said.

In another programme, BNP secretary general Mirza Fakhrul Islam Alamgir said that the state of Bangladesh was now facing an existential crisis without democracy or freedom.

The country’s sovereignty is under threat, he said.

Addressing a programme arranged in the capital’s Segun Bagicha to mark the founding anniversary of the Revolutionary Workers Party of Bangladesh, he said BNP chairperson Khaleda Zia is very sick, and movement is very necessary for her release.

About simultaneous movement, Fakhrul said, ‘Even if we can’t get on single-stage, it’s a big thing to do movement simultaneously, and everyone is agitating. So, the movement will not fail.’

‘The government will be removed, and the people’s government will be established through the movement,’ he added.

Zainul Abedin Farroque, a former opposition chief whip in parliament, also strongly opposed the Indian government’s plan to develop a network of railway tracks through Bangladesh to connect India’s northeast region with the rest of the country.

‘I would like to say that we won’t accept these unequal agreements with India. The country’s people can’t accept them. Revoke these unfair deals,’ he said.

BNP senior joint secretary general Ruhul Kabir Rizvi said at a press conference at the party’s Naya Paltan central office that the goat scandal, Benazir scandal, and Aziz scandal were brought forward to hide the government’s anti-national agreement with India.

‘India will build a railway through Bangladesh by bypassing the chicken neck without the consent of the people, and that railway will go back to India through Bangladesh. It will be a corridor in the name of the railway, and if it is seen in silence, it will be an insult to the martyrs of 1971,’ he said.

‘Establishing a railway line over Bangladesh’s heart to transport Indian military and civilian commodities will put the people’s destiny in a state of flux amid the severe trade imbalance,’ said the BNP leader.