A Gurkha on hunger strike outside Downing Street was hospitalised after not eating for 11 days.

       Dhan Gurung, 60, was taken to hospital shortly after 1.30am on Wednesday due to heart problems but returned to Whitehall a few hours later to continue with his protest.

       Mr Gurung, of Basingstoke, had been protesting from his wheelchair in Whitehall over equal pension rights for Gurkhas who retired before 1997 and are not eligible for a full UK Armed Forces pension.

       He previously said that the group of protestors would “keep coming back here, we want to continue our hunger (strike) until death.

       “We don’t care about sacrificing our life.”

       Yam Gurung, the spokesman for the Gurkhas and a friend of the 60-year-old, said: “The Government must listen. We have done so much. Why are they treating us like illegitimate children? We have done so much for them.

       “We don’t want anybody to die here. Not a single one. We are human beings. I want to ask Boris Johnson: ‘What is your interpretation of human rights? Tell the world. Tell the Gurkhas’.”

       He explained that Mr Gurung now had a blood pressure monitor and a heartbeat monitor to track his health, having since been discharged.

       However, he cautioned that the Support Our Gurkhas protesters were getting “weaker”.

       He said: “On Monday, Dhan sent an email to his family in Nepal and said, ‘This will be my last email’.”

       Mr Gurung said he had stayed with his friend that day as he was worried. He added that Mr Gurung had not wanted to go to hospital, but was convinced it was in his best interests to do so.

       “He told me quietly that his heart can stop any time, so we have got monitors and a medic keeping an eye on his health,” Mr Gurung added. “It wasn’t a heart attack, he just has minor problems with his heart. [The protestors] are getting weaker.”