Bangladesh's top court upholds acquittal of Khaleda Zia in corruption case

Bangladesh's Supreme Court on Monday upheld a High Court ruling that acquitted former premier and BNP chairperson Khaleda Zia in a corruption case in which she was sentenced to seven years in jail by a lower court.

A three-member Appellate Division bench headed by Justice Md Ashfaqul Islam passed the order, dismissing the plea filed by the state and the Anti-Corruption Commission challenging the High Court verdict that acquitted Zia and others, the state-run BSS news agency reported.

Zia, 79, was convicted in the Zia Charitable Trust corruption case in 2018 by a Dhaka court. The court sentenced her to seven years imprisonment and fined her Taka 1 million.

On November 27 last year, the High Court allowed two separate appeals filed by Zia and two other convicts, Ziaul Islam and Monirul Islam Khan, challenging the lower court conviction and sentence in the Zia Charitable Trust graft case and acquitted them of the charges.

The state and the ACC filed the plea, challenging the High Court ruling.

That matter came to the Appellate Division's regular bench for hearing and the apex court passed its order on Monday, the news agency reported.

The graft case filed in 2011 by the Anti-Corruption Commission with Tejgaon Police Station accused Zia and three others of abusing power to raise funds for the trust from unknown sources.

Zia now stands acquitted in both the Zia Orphanage Trust and Zia Charitable Trust cases, in which she had previously been convicted and sentenced, Maksud Ullah, a lawyer for the BNP chairperson, was quoted as saying by The Daily Star newspaper.

The Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) chairperson was lodged in the Old Dhaka Central Jail on February 8, 2018, after the Dhaka court sentenced her in the Zia Orphanage Trust corruption case.

During the COVID-19 outbreak, the Sheikh Hasina-led Awami League government temporarily released Zia from jail after 776 days through an executive order, suspending her sentence on March 25, 2020, with conditions that she would stay in her house and not leave the country.

On August 6 last year, after the ouster of the Hasina regime, Zia was freed by an order of President Mohammed Shahabuddin.

Zia served as the prime minister of Bangladesh from March 1991 to March 1996, and again from June 2001 to October 2006. She is currently in London for for medical treatment.