Khaleda faces trial

The High Court yesterday cleared the way for resuming the trial of BNP Chairperson Khaleda Zia in the Barapukuria coalmine corruption case.

The bench of Justice Md Nuruzzaman and Justice Abdur Rob did so by vacating a 2008 stay order on the case proceedings.

This is the fifth graft case against Khaleda that got the HC's clearance for lower court to go ahead with the trial.

Earlier, the HC lifted legal bars to continuing trials in Gatco, Niko, Zia Charitable Trust and Zia Orphanage Trust graft cases against Khaleda. The trial courts concerned have already started hearing the charitable trust and the orphanage trust cases.

Yesterday, the HC gave the verdict after rejecting a writ petition filed by the BNP chief in 2008 challenging the legality of trial proceedings in the case filed by the Anti-Corruption Commission (ACC) earlier that year.

The ACC accuses the former prime minister and 15 others of causing a loss of Tk 159 crores to the state exchequer by awarding a contract for operation of Barapukuria coalmine to a Chinese company between June 2003 and June 2005, abusing power.

Following Khaleda's petition, the HC stayed the trial proceedings in the case.

ACC lawyer Khurshid Alam Khan yesterday told The Daily Star that the judges rejected the petition saying the lower court would examine whether or not the corruption allegations against Khaleda were true and so there was no need to keep the stay order in place any more.

Khaleda's counsel Raghib Rauf Chowdhury said his client would move the Supreme Court against the HC verdict after receiving the verdict's full text.

2 MORE TESTIFY IN ZIA TRUST CASE

A Dhaka court yesterday recorded statements of two more prosecution witnesses -- Md Aminuddin and Md Nazrul Islam, former officials of Sonali Bank's Prime Minister Office branch -- in the Zia Charitable Trust graft case in absence of the BNP chief.

With them, 10 prosecution witnesses have so far testified before the makeshift court at Bakshibazar in the capital.

After recording the statements, Judge Abu Ahmed Jomadar of the Special Judge's Court-3 of Dhaka set aside October 15 for Khaleda's lawyer Masud Ahmed Talukder to cross-examine the witnesses.

Before that, Masud filed two petitions, saying the BNP chief would return from London after Eid-ul-Azha and they wanted to cross-examine the witnesses on the next scheduled date in presence of Khaleda Zia.

He filed two more petitions over Khaleda's non-appearance before the court.

On September 10, the former premier appeared before the court to attend the hearing in the charitable trust and the orphanage trust graft cases. Before that, she didn't appear before the court for three consecutive days, citing health issues.

According to the charge sheet in the charitable trust case, Khaleda and three others abused power to collect Tk 6.19 crore for the trust during the BNP-led government's tenure between 1991 and 1996.

In the orphanage trust case, the BNP chief, her son Tarique Rahman and four others are accused of embezzling Tk 2.1 crore by forming the charity that exists only on paper.