Dhaka – Bangladesh Supreme Court on Wednesday acquitted former prime minister Khaleda Zia from a corruption case, in which she was convicted and sentenced to 10 years in jail.
Court officials said a five-member panel of judges headed by Chief Justice Syed Refaat Ahmed delivered the verdict in a leave to appeal petition filed by the former prime minister and other defendants against the verdicts by a trial court and a High Court bench in 2018.
Defence lawyer Zaynul Abedin told reporters that the Supreme Court acquitted all other accused in the graft case, including Tareque Rahman, son of Khaleda Zia and acting chairperson of the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP).
Khaleda Zia, now 79, is a three-time prime minister and has led the BNP since the 1981 assassination of former president Ziaur Rahman, her husband and the party’s founder.
She had been in prison between February 2018 and March 2020 after a court sentenced her to five years in jail for alleged misappropriation of funds meant for orphans.
A higher court later doubled the term.
Her party, at that time, termed the allegations baseless and accused the previous government of former prime minister Sheikh Hasina for targeting Khleda for political revenge.
However, Hasina, her arch political rival, released Khaleda from the prison in 2022 suspending the jail-term over health ground. The government imposed condition for her release that Khaleda would not leave the country and engage in any political activities.
The BNP has taken the politically-charged cases to the Supreme Court to seek justice in those allegations after an interim administration was installed following the ouster of Hasina government in the face of a violent uprising in August last year.
Hasina fled to neighbouring India during the uprising.
Khaleda Zia was cleared by the court in November in yet another graft case, in which she was sentenced to seven years in jail in October 2018 for allegedly raising money for a charity from unknown sources during her 2001-2006 tenure as prime minister.
She is now in London for medical treatment.
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