By IANS,
Kolkata : Students and teachers of Dinhata High School (Boys) in Dinhata village in West Bengal are geared up to receive the institution’s most famous alumni — General Hussain Muhammad Ershad, Bangladesh’s former military ruler.
Ershad, 81, will visit his ancestral home in West Bengal’s Cooch Behar district Sunday and will also meet one of his ailing childhood friends, Asit Chakraborty. He last visited Dinhata sub-division in the district in 1975.
He would attend a programme at Dinhata High School (Boys) Tuesday from where he completed his matriculation in 1946 and migrated to the then East Pakistan in 1947.
“We’re extremely happy that he (Ershad) is coming to our school after such a long time. We’ve arranged several cultural programmes. The National Cadet Corps (NCC) team of our school will present him a guard of honour during his visit,” the school’s chemistry teacher, Jayanta Chakraborty, told IANS on the phone.
He said the entire school was wearing a festive look on the occasion of Ershad’s visit.
“We’ve painted our century-old school buildings and have plans to showcase a few old photographs of Ershad. We came to know that he was a very good player of our school’s football team and won several trophies in tournaments.
“We’ve preserved quite a few photographs of Ershad in our school achieves and will display them during his visit,” Chakraborty added.
Ershad, who seized power in a military coup in 1982, will come by road, crossing the Tangrabanda border check post from his home in Rangpur. He will come to his ancestral home with his only son Erich.
Ershad’s father, Muhammad Maqbul Hussein, had migrated to the then East Paksitan and finally settled down in Rangpur, while his five brothers decided to stay back in India.
Ershad ruled Bangladesh till 1990, when he handed over power to a civilian government. He then floated the Jatiya Party and was elected an MP for two successive terms in 1991 and 1996.