BNP Chairperson Khaleda Zia yesterday filed four writ petitions with the Supreme Court challenging recent High Court verdicts that cleared the way for a lower court to continue trial proceedings against her in Zia Orphanage Trust and Zia Charitable Trust graft cases.
The trial court is set to record statements of the prosecution witnesses in the cases filed by the Anti-Corruption Commission (ACC).   
On April 23, an HC bench scrapped two petitions, in which the former prime minister had challenged the charge framing against her in the cases.
Later on June 19, another HC bench rejected two writ petitions filed by Khaleda questioning the legality of appointment of Bashudev Roy as judge of the Special Judge's Court-3 of Dhaka.
Roy indicted the BNP chief and eight others in the corruption cases on March 19 and she filed the petitions against Roy's appointment on May 12.
However, the judge deferred the date for recording the deposition of prosecution witnesses to July 9 after Khaleda's lawyers prayed to the court for adjournment of the proceedings.
Among the pleas filed by her yesterday, two leave-to-appeal petitions sought cancellation of the HC verdict delivered in April and the other two pleas asked for a stay order on the verdict pronounced nearly two months after that.
The indictment orders against Khaleda are illegal as the judge of the court did not even ask her whether she was innocent, AM Mahbub Uddin Khokon, a counsel for Khaleda, told The Daily Star.
Advocate M Asaduzzaman, who submitted the stay petitions on behalf of Khaleda, told this correspondent that the appointment of judge Bashudev Roy was illegal, and therefore the indictment orders issued by him were also unlawful.
The government should have issued a gazette notification for appointing the special judge for dealing with the cases as per the Criminal Law Amendment Act 1958 but the proper procedures were not followed in this regard, he said.
But the HC did not consider these issues while rejecting Khaleda's writ petitions, the lawyer added.