The Supreme Court today stayed the High Court orders that granted bail to seven convicts in a case filed over the attack on motorcade of the then opposition leader and current Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina in Satkhira in 2002. 

Chamber judge of the Appellate Division of the SC Justice Hasan Foez Siddique passed the stay order following a petition filed by the state, seeking stay on the HC orders.

The chamber judge also sent the state's petition to its full bench and fixed May 30 for hearing the stay petition, Attorney General AM Amin Uddin told The Daily Star.

He also said the chamber judge's stay order will continue till May 30 and the full bench of the Appellate Division will pass further order on the same day (May 30).

Following separate bail petitions filed by the seven convicts, the HC on May 25 granted them bail in the case.

The convicts are lawyers Abdus Sattar and Abdus Samad, Golan Rasul, Rakib, Zahirul, Shahabuddin and Monirul Islam.

The 18 convicts including lawyers Abdus Sattar and Abdus Samad, who have been sentenced to four years to four-and-a-half years' imprisonment by a trial court in Satkhira, recently filed nine separate bail petitions with the HC.

On August 30, 2002, then opposition leader Sheikh Hasina, now the prime minister, visited the house of a freedom fighter, after his wife was allegedly raped, in Hizaldi village of Kolaroa upazila.

While she was returning to Jashore, BNP men kept a bus haphazardly on a road near the office of Kolaroa upazila BNP. As Hasina's motorcade reached the area, BNP men launched an attack on it, according to the case statement.

At least 12 people, including AL leaders and journalists, were injured in the attack

On February 4 this year, Satkhira's Chief Judicial Magistrate Court convicted and sentenced fifty people in the case. Among them, 34 convicts, who were present in the courtroom, were sent to jail the same day. The others are on the run.