New Delhi: In a major setback to Bangladesh’s ailing former prime minister Khaleda Zia, on Monday a court in Dhaka sentenced her to seven years in prison in a second corruption case for embezzling millions from a charitable trust in her late husband’s name.
The Zia Charitable Trust graft case was filed by the Anti-Corruption Commission in 2011.
Zia, 73, who has already been serving a jail term since February after being convicted in another case of embezzlement from an orphanage named after her husband president Ziaur Rahman, was sentenced along with three others, Zia’s former political affairs secretary Harris Chowdhury, his former aide and former BIWTA acting director Ziaul Islam Munna, and former Dhaka mayor Sadeque Hossain Khoka’s personal secretary Monirul Islam Khan. The latest sentence, which comes ahead of general elections in December, is related to the Zia Charitable Trust.
According to the chargesheet, Zia and three others abused their power and collected USD 375,000 for the trust from unknown sources.
Judge Mohammad Akhtaruzzaman announced the verdict from the temporary premises of the court at the old central prison at Dhaka’s Nazimuddin Road. Earlier in the day, Bangladesh’s Supreme Court cleared the way for a lower court to deliver its verdict in the case by rejecting Zia’s plea to halt the proceedings. The final trial proceedings in the case went ahead in the absence of Zia after the prison authorities repeatedly failed to bring her to the court.
Zia had earlier skipped appearances in the case citing illness. She recently complained to the court that she was losing feeling in her hand and in a leg. On October 6, she was taken to Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujib Medical University hospital, where she is currently receiving treatment.
Zia’s party says the charges for both cases are politically motivated.