Govt seeks stay as Khaleda gets bail in 2 cases

The High Court on Monday granted six months’ ad-interim bail to jailed Bangladesh Nationalist Party chairperson Khaleda Zia in each of two cases of Comilla but it rejected her bail prayer in the other case of Narail.
Hours after she was granted the bails, the government filed separate applications with the Appellate Division’s chamber judge seeking stays on the High Court’s order relating to the bails. 
Chamber judge Hasan Foez Siddique set today for hearing the applications. 
Khaleda’s lawyer Mahbub Uddin Khokon later told reporters that there was no legal bar to her release on bail as she obtained bail in the two Comilla cases in which she was shown arrested after she got bail in the Zia Orphanage Trust case.
On May 16, the Appellate Division upheld Khaleda’s bail granted by the High Court in the Zia Orphanage Trust case in which she was sentenced for five years.
The Appellate Division has not yet written the full verdict upholding her bail granted by the High Court Division on March 12.
Sources in the SC registrar general’s office told New Age that Justice Muhammad Imman Ali, who was assigned to write the verdict, was now abroad.
He left the country for France and London on May 26 to attend two-day World Congress on Justice for Children in Paris from May 28.
Justice Imman Ali will stay in Paris until May 31 and later he will visit his parents in London. He is scheduled to return on June 10.
Justice Imman Ali submitted a draft of about eight-page verdict, they said. 
In one case in which she got bail she was accused of instigating perpetrators to kill eight passengers at Chouddagram, Comilla, when a bus was torched during countrywide indefinite blockade on February 3, 2015.
The other case in which she also got bail accused her of ordering perpetrators to damage a private covered van by torching it at Chouddagram during the blockade on January 25, 2015.
Khaleda’s bail petition in Narail case was rejected as the court said it was not being pressed by her lawyers.
The case was filed against her in December 2015 on charge of defaming the country’s liberation war by expressing doubts about the 
total number of people losing life during the war.
A bench of Justice AKM Asaduzzaman and Justice JBM Hassan passed the orders after hearing her three bail petitions for four days. 
The bench advised Khaleda’s counsel Khandker Mahbub Hossain to get her bail petition disposed of by Narail chief judicial magistrate’s court in order to seek bail in the higher court.
Before refusing bail in Narail case, the government, on the court’s query, informed the High Court that on May 27 the Narail court set August 30 for hearing on the petition seeking her bail and showing her arrested in the case.
The court said that Khaleda’s counsels misguided it saying the Narail court fixed no further date of hearing her bail petition since her matter was pending with the High Court.
They said that the Narail court was scheduled to hold the bail petition hearing on May 25 which fell on Friday.
Two separate High Court benches are scheduled for today to hear Khaleda’s bail petitions in three more cases. 
Of the cases, two will be heard by High Court bench of Justice M Enayetur Rahim and Justice Shahidul Karim today. One of the cases is related to doctoring her date of birth while the other alleged that she had shown disrespect to the national flag by appointing Jamaat leaders as ministers.
The hearing in the rest one will be heard by a bench of Justice AKM Asaduzzaman and Justice JBM Hassan. The case was filed under the Special Powers Act 1974 for the killing of eight people in burning passengers’ bus in February 2015. It was among the two cases filed in connection with the deaths of the eight people in Comilla. 
Khaleda was not shown arrested in the last three cases although warrant of her arrest was issued against her by separate courts in Dhaka and Comilla. 

News Courtesy: www.newagebd.net