Khaleda's Bail: SC delivers judgment today
The Supreme Court will deliver its verdict today on the appeals against the High Court order that granted bail to BNP Chairperson Khaleda Zia in the Zia Orphanage Trust corruption case.
A four-member bench of the Appellate Division of the SC headed by Chief Justice Syed Mahmud Hossain was set to hand down the judgment yesterday. The apex court deferred the date for the verdict after Attorney General Mahbubey Alam and Khaleda's lawyer Zainul Abedin placed some arguments on the appeals yesterday.
When the judges sat in the bench around 9:50am for delivering the judgment, the attorney general told the court that he wanted to place some more arguments.
The AG said he could not complete his arguments on May 9 as the court witnessed a commotion by some lawyers on that day.
During yesterday's hearing, Attorney General Mahbubey Alam told the SC that this court had not interfered in the HC orders that granted bail to barrister Nazmul Huda, a former BNP minister, Mohammed Nasim, now health minister, barrister Mir Helal Uddin, an SC lawyer, and Iqbal Hasan Mahmud Tuku, a former BNP state minister, in separate corruption cases as those cases were filed for not submitting wealth statements to the Anti-Corruption Commission and submitting false information about their wealth.
They (Huda, Nasim, Helal and Tuku) had suffered in jail for more than one year and they were seriously ill and submitted medical certificates to the court, he said, adding that the allegations mentioned in the cases filed against them were different from the allegation brought against Khaleda in the Zia Orphanage Trust corruption case.
The attorney general said the BNP chief did not submit any medical documents to the court in support of her claim that she was seriously ill.
The money of orphans had been embezzled from the prime minister's fund in the Zia Orphanage Trust case, he said, adding that the HC did not consider this while granting bail to Khaleda in this case.
The AG told the apex court that Khaleda had discharged the duties of the prime minister and continued her politics despite having the diseases “which are tolerable”. Therefore, she could not be granted bail on health grounds, he said.
Mahbubey Alam added that the HC could hear and dispose of the appeal filed by Khaleda challenging the trial court verdict that sentenced her to five years' imprisonment in this case.
Khaleda's lawyer Zainul Abedin told the SC that the arguments made by the attorney general had gone in favour of his client as the AG placed some instances, saying that the SC had not interfered in the HC orders that granted bail to the convicted in different cases.
The HC on March 12 had granted bail to Khaleda, now in jail, in the Zia Orphanage Trust corruption case.
Later, the ACC and the government moved the appeals before the SC challenging the HC's bail order.
On February 8, the Special Judge's Court-5 of Dhaka sentenced Khaleda to jail after it had found her and five others guilty in the graft case.
The court also sentenced Khaleda's elder son Tarique Rahman, now in the UK, and four others to 10 years' rigorous imprisonment each, and fined them a total of Tk 2.10 crore, saying that all the convicts have to pay the fine in equal amounts.
The ACC had filed the case with Ramna Police Station in July 2008, accusing the six of misappropriating over Tk 2.1 crore that came from a foreign bank as grants for orphans.
In another development, the hearings of 11 cases, including a sedition suit, filed against Khaleda were adjourned by a Dhaka court yesterday until July 1.
Judge Kamrul Hossain Mollah of the Metropolitan Sessions Judge's Court passed the order after Khaleda's lawyer submitted 11 petitions seeking adjournment of hearings of the cases.
In the petitions, Khaleda's lawyer Sanaullah Mia mentioned that his client had earlier filed writ petitions with the HC seeking quashing of the case proceedings.
Following a hearing, the HC had already stayed trial proceedings of six cases.
Of the 11 cases, 10 were lodged in the first three months of 2015 over arson attacks on vehicles. The other case was filed with a Dhaka court on charge of making seditious comments about the freedom fighters and the Liberation War martyrs.