BNP will stage demonstrations across the country on Thursday in protest against what the party said issuing a death threat to its chairperson by Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina with her comment about pushing Khaleda Zia into the river from the Padma Bridge.

Party Secretary General Mirza Fakhrul Islam Alamgir announced the programme at a press conference at BNP Chairperson’s Gulshan office.

He said the decision to hold the protest was taken at a virtual meeting of their party’s standing committee on Monday night.

The BNP leader said their party and its all associate bodies will stage the demonstrations in all divisional cities, except Dhaka, and district towns.

Earlier on Monday, BNP’s Dhaka south and north city units arranged a rally in front of the Jatiya Press Club in the capital protesting the Prime Minister’s ‘indecent’ comment on the Padma Bridge involving Khaleda.

Also read: BNP again seeks PM’s apology for Padma Bridge remark on Khaleda

On Wednesday last, Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina told a meeting of Awami League that Khaleda Zia once said that the Padma Bridge would collapse while using it as it was being constructed with patchworks. “What should now be done to them? They should be taken to the Padma Bridge and pushed into the river from there,” she said.

The PM also slammed Nobel Peace Prize winner, economist Dr Muhammad Yunus, for what she said making his efforts to block the World Bank's funding for the Padma Bridge.

Fakhrul said the meeting of their standing committee elaborately discussed the 'disrespectful' remarks made by the Prime Minister about Khaleda and the senior citizens of the country, including Dr Yunus.

“The meeting thinks that this statement of the Awami President Sheikh Hasina is tantamount to a death threat to Begum Khaleda Zia. This remark by the head of the unelected government is extremely dangerous because when the head of the executive branch threatens to push someone into the river from the Padma Bridge, it falls into the category of ordering to kill,” Fakhrul said.

He said the Prime Minister also issued a similar threat to Bangladesh's lone Nobel laureate and Grameen Bank founder Dr Yunus which was 'devoid of political etiquette', 'indecent' and 'disrespectful'. “The meeting strongly condemned and protested such comments."