AD upholds HC order staying 4 Khaleda cases
The Appellate Division on Monday upheld a High Court ruling of 2017 staying proceedings of four arson cases filed against former prime minister and Bangladesh Nationalist Party chairperson Khaleda Zia.
The cases were filed with Darus Salam and Jatrabari police stations in the capital.
An online Appellate Division bench led by Chief Justice Syed Mahmud Hossain gave the order.
The HC in its ruling on April 13, 2017 asked the government to explain why the orders of Dhaka Metropolitan Special Tribunal 1, which took cognisance of charges in four cases against Khaleda for allegedly setting fire to public buses in February 2015, would not be scrapped.
Khaleda’s lawyer Mahbub Uddin Khokon, after the AD order, told reporters that Khaleda was not referred in first information reports of the cases lodged with Darus Salam and Jatrabari police stations in 2015.
He also said that the BNP chairperson was rather confined in her Gulshan office by the law enforcement agencies during the incidents.
Her name was included in the charge-sheets later and, as a result, the proceedings should not continue, he added.
As a result, Mahbub Uddin said, his client had appealed to the HC for cancellation of the proceedings of the cases in 2017 and the HC stayed the proceedings of the cases and issued rule asking the government to explain why the lower court orders taking cognisance of charges of the four cases would not be scrapped.
Mahbub said that the government then appealed the Appellate Division challenging the HC Division rule and the ad disposed of the government appeal upholding the HC order and directing to dispose of the HC rule.
The April 13, 2017 ruling was given by the HC bench of justice Md Miftah Uddin Choudhury and justice ANM Bashir Ullah after hearing four separate petitions filed by Khaleda challenging the legality of the lower court’s orders.
Meanwhile, Dhaka metropolitan sessions judge KM Imrul Kayes on Monday set October 6 for hearing on 11 cases against the BNP chairperson on charges of sedition and inciting violence.
Of the 11 cases, eight were lodged with Darus Salam Police Station and two with Jatrabari Police Station for inciting violence and the sedition case was filed by Awami League working committee member and Supreme Court lawyer Momtaz Uddin Ahmed Mehedi with the Dhaka Metropolitan Magistrate Court.
Speaking at a discussion on December 21, 2015, Khaleda expressed doubts about the government’s claim that nearly three million people died during the 1971 liberation war.
‘There is a debate about how many hundreds of thousands were martyred in the Liberation War. Different books give different accounts,’ she had said.
The main accused in the cases are Aman Ullaha Aman, Habib Un Nabi Khan Sohel, and Sultan Salahuddin Tuku.
The 10 cases of inciting violence are set for hearing on framing charges while the sedition case is fixed for hearing on whether to accept the charge against the former prime minister.
The cases of inciting violence were filed during hartals enforced by the BNP-led alliance in 2015 when she was confined at her office at Gulshan in Dhaka.
Police submitted charge-sheets in the cases in the first half of 2016.
Khaleda Zia was sentenced to jail after her conviction in Zia Orphanage Trust corruption case by a court in February 8, 2018.
On March this year, she was released from jail for six months upon an executive order considering her age and on humanitarian ground following a formal appeal of her family.
The six-month tenure of the order will end on September 24.
News Courtesy: www.newagebd.net
