SC upholds bail for Khaleda Zia

The Supreme Court today upheld bail for BNP Chairperson Khaleda Zia in Zia Orphanage Trust corruption case, in which she is currently serving a five-year jail term.

However, this will not mean Khaleda will be released from jail because, as her lawyers said, she is being held behind bars in some other cases.

READ MORE: Implications of Khaleda's imprisonment

The four-member bench of the Appellate Division headed by Chief Justice Syed Mahmud Hossain dismissed the appeals filed by the Anti-Corruption Commission and the government challenging the High Court’s bail to Khaleda.

The Supreme Court, however, directed the HC bench, led by Justice Enayetur Rahim, to hear and dispose the appeal filed by Khaleda challenging conviction verdict in the case by July 31.

Khaleda’s lawyer Advocate Khandakar Mahbub Hossain told The Daily Star that the BNP chairperson cannot get released from jail following the SC judgment at this moment as she is shown arrested in three other cases.

The HC on March 12 had granted bail to Khaleda, now in jail, in the Zia Orphanage Trust corruption case.

Later, the ACC and the government moved the appeals before the SC challenging the HC's bail order.

On February 8, the Special Judge's Court-5 of Dhaka sentenced Khaleda to jail after it had found her and five others guilty in the graft case.

The court also sentenced Khaleda's elder son Tarique Rahman, now in the UK, and four others to 10 years' rigorous imprisonment each, and fined them a total of Tk 2.10 crore, saying that all the convicts have to pay the fine in equal amounts.

The ACC had filed the case with Ramna Police Station in July 2008, accusing the six of misappropriating over Tk 2.1 crore that came from a foreign bank as grants for orphans.