The Supreme Court today stayed the High Court verdict that doubled BNP Chairperson Khaleda Zia's five-year jail term in Zia Orphanage Trust corruption case.
The Appellate Division of the apex court also allowed Khaleda to move an appeal before the court challenging the HC verdict.
A three-member bench of the Appellate Division, headed by Justice Md Ashfaqul Islam, passed the order after holding hearing on two separate leave to appeal petitions filed by Khaleda against the HC judgement.
Today, the SC also asked the lawyers for Khaleda to submit in two weeks the concise statements containing the points on which they will place arguments on the appeals before this court.
Khaleda, also former prime minister, filed the leave to appeal petitions with the Appellate Division on March 14, 2019 through his lawyer challenging the HC verdict. In the petitions, she prayed to the apex court to scrap her 10-year sentence.
Khaleda's lawyer Kayser Kamal and BNP's Legal Affairs Secretary Kayser Kamal told that Khaleda has been made accused in total 37 separate cases filed during the regimes of the then military backed caretaker government and Sheikh Hasina-led government on different charges including corruption, violence, arson, defamation and sedition.
Among all the cases, the HC on October 30 and 31 this year scrapped 12 cases, the lower courts concerned in different districts have earlier dismissed nine defamation cases and the president has granted her clemency in two cases in which she was convicted and sentenced to imprisonments, the lawyer said adding that she is on bail in all the remaining cases against her.
Khaleda landed in jail on February 8, 2018, after a special court in Dhaka sentenced her to five years in jail in connection with the case.
Subsequently, a petition was filed by the ACC, following which the HC on October 30 increased the punishment to 10 years' imprisonment.
Khaleda, who was under house arrest for the last five years, was released on August 6 this year after the president pardoned her punishments, a day after prime minister Sheikh Hasina resigned and fled the country in the face of a mass uprising.
On that day, President Mohammed Shahabuddin, exercising his power under Article 49 of the constitution, granted Khaleda clemency in two cases based on the law ministry's recommendation and ordered her release.
source: the daily star
