Hearings adjourned till Dec 17
A Dhaka court today adjourned till December 17 recording deposition of the compliant in Zia Orphanage and Zia Charitable Trust corruption cases against BNP Chairperson Khaleda Zia.
Judge Basudev Roy of the Special Judge Court-3 was forced to adjourn the hearing just after recording the deposition for seven minutes from the compliant amid chaos by defence lawyers.
Earlier in the day, the court rejected six adjournment petitions submitted by Khaleda’s lawyer but the court granted Khaleda’s non-appearance petition, which was submitted by the defence as BNP chief could not appear before it today citing security problems. On December 1, Khaleda skipped the court hearing on the same reason.
After rejecting the petitions today, the court called Deputy Director of the Anti-Corruption Commission Harun-ur-Rashid, also the complainant of both cases, to take the dock for giving his deposition.
But before he began, Khaleda’s lawyer again submitted two separate petitions for the reconsideration of his appeals.
Earlier, the court rejected four petitions filed by Khaleda seeking time for recording deposition on December 1 and October 13.
The same court on September 22 began trial of the cases in absence of BNP chief and recorded a partial statement of the complainant.
After recording the statement for over 15 minutes, the judge was forced to postpone the hearing till today (December 8) due to chaos created by defence lawyers.
Earlier in the day, the court rejected six petitions filed by the BNP chief seeking adjournment of the deposition recording in the graft cases.
The ACC in 2009 filed the Zia Orphanage Trust graft case for embezzlement of over Tk 2.1 crore by forming a “fake” trust which existed only on paper.
The anti-graft watchdog filed Zia Charitable Trust corruption case in 2011 accusing four people, including Khaleda, of abusing power in setting up the charitable trust.
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