Graft case against Ershad: 24yr-old plea on Sunday’s hearing list
The 24-year-old appeal of former president HM Ershad against a lower court verdict that jailed him for three years in a corruption case has come up in the hearing list of the High Court.
The appeal has been enlisted as item No 4 in Sunday’s list of the HC bench of Justice Bhabani Prasad Singha.
The bench on Sunday might fix a date for hearing the appeal, Anti-Corruption Commission (ACC) lawyer Khurshid Alam Khan told The Daily Star today.
The commission’s lawyer on August 22 prayed to the bench for hearing the appeal for its disposal.
Advocate Khurshid told The Daily Star that the then Bureau of Anti-Corruption (Bac), which became defunct after the formation of the ACC in 2004, had filed the case against Ershad with Cantonment Police Station for misappropriating Tk 1.91 crore by misusing power at different times when he was the president of the state from December 11, 1983, to December 6, 1990.
A Dhaka court on February 3 in 1992 convicted Ershad, also Jatiya Party chairman, and sentenced him to three years’ imprisonment for misappropriating the money and ordered the authorities concerned to confiscate the money and his Toyota Land Cruiser car for committing corruption.
The same year, Ershad filed an appeal with the HC, challenging the lower court verdict.
Following the appeal, the HC stayed the lower court verdict, he said, adding that on February 26, 2012, the ACC became a party of the case under the HC’s permission, as the Bac was not functional.
The ACC lawyer said Ershad had got bail from the HC in the case.
He, however, could not say how long Ershad had served in jail in the case.
Khurshid also said they had earlier tried to get the appeal of Ershad moved before the HC, but there was no single-judge HC bench that has jurisdiction to hear such an appeal relating to corruption.
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