Staff Reporter :
BNP Chairperson Begum Khaleda Zia’s lawyers on Monday received the certified copy of the judgment of the Zia Orphanage Trust case.
Khaleda Zia, who is now in jail, can file an appeal with the High Court against the lower court verdict that sentenced her five years imprisonment and seek bail in the case.
Mokarram Hossain, an assistant of the Special Judge Court-5 of Dhaka, officially supplied the 1,174 pages verdict to a lawyer’s team of Khaleda Zia.
Advocate Masud Ahmed Talukder, one of the lawyers for Khaleda Zia, told The New Nation that they had received the certified copy at about 4.30pm yesterday and they were trying to file an appeal with the High Court today (Tuesday).
The lawyer, however, did not able to say anything more about the certified copy as they did not opened the big-size verdict’s copy till then. The judge delivered the order portion of the 622 pages verdict. But the court assistant supplied the 1,174 pages verdict to the lawyers.
“The page number of the verdict increased as the supplied copy was typed by a computer,” Advocated Masud said.
Pro-BNP Senior lawyers were supposed to sit-in a meeting at last night in the chamber of former Attorney General A J Mohammad Ali to prepare appeal petitions against the verdict of Khaleda Zia and BNP Senior Vice-Chairman Tarique Rahman, who also a convict in this case, said Barrister A K M Ehsanur Rahman, also a lawyer for Khaleda Zia.
Judge of the Special Court-5 of Dhaka, Dr Md Akhtaruzzaman, sentenced former Prime Minister Khaleda Zia to five years imprisonment in Zia Orphanage Trust case filed by the Anti-Corruption Commission (ACC).
The special court also sentenced Khaleda Zia’s eldest son and BNP Senior Vice-Chairman Tarique Rahman, and four others to 10 years’ rigorous imprisonment and slapped a fine of Tk 2.10 crore each.
The ACC filed the case with Ramna Police Station in July 2008, accusing Khaleda Zia and the five convicts of misappropriating over Tk 2.10 crore that had come from a foreign bank as grants for orphans.
On February 11, the Special Court directed the jail authorities to provide Khaleda Zia with first-class division in line with the jail code as well as allowing her house help to stay with her in jail.
On the night of the same day, she was shifted to one of the four rooms on the first floor of the renovated day-care centre in the jail from the room of a nearby two-stored building once used as office of the Jail Superintendent.
