The High Court (HC) on Monday granted bail to BNP Chairperson Begum Khaleda Zia for six months in an arson case filed under the Special Powers Act 1974 in Cumilla in 2015.
The HC bench of Justice A K M Asaduzzaman and Justice S M Mozibur Rahman passed this order after hearing a bail petition
filed by Khaleda Zia in the case.
Deputy Attorney General Mohammad Bashir Ullah told the reporters that the government will move an appeal before the Appellate Division of the Supreme Court against the HC bail order.
Khaleda cannot get release from the jail following yesterday’s HC order as she is shown arrested in some few other cases.
Eight people were killed and 26 others injured after a bus was torched in Cumilla’s Chouddagram upazila on February 2 in 2015, during the anti-government agitation.
The following day, police lodged two cases— one for murder and another under the Special Powers Act, 1974— with Chouddagram Police Station in this connection.
On July 23, the HC directed a Cumilla court to hear and dispose of her bail petition in the case by July 26.
Following the HC order, on July 25, the Cumilla court rejected Khaleda’s bail petition in connection with the arson case.
Then Khaleda filed a bail petition with the HC challenging the Cumilla court’s order.
Khaleda landed in jail on February 8 this year after a Dhaka court sentenced her to five years’ imprisonment in Zia Orphanage Trust case.
