Bangladesh court acquits former PM Khaleda Zia in corruption case

Bangladesh High Court on Wednesday acquitted former prime minister and BNP Chairperson Khaleda Zia in a corruption case in which she was sentenced to seven years in jail by a lower court, according to media reports.

Zia, 79, was convicted in the Zia Charitable Trust corruption case in 2018 by a Dhaka court. It also sentenced her to seven years imprisonment under the former prime minister Sheikh Hasina's Awami League government and fined her Tk 1 million.

A bench of Justices AKM Asaduzzaman and Syed Enayet Hossain overturned the decision based on an appeal by Zia, the bdnews24.com news portal reported. Two others accused in the case were also acquitted by the court.

The graft case was filed in 2011 by the Anti-Corruption Commission with Tejgaon Police Station, accusing Zia and three others of abusing power to raise funds for the trust from unknown sources, the Daily Star news portal reported.

The Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) Chairperson was lodged in the Old Dhaka Central Jail on February 8, 2018, after a special court sentenced her to five years in prison in the Zia Orphanage Trust corruption case.

On October 30, 2018, the High Court raised her punishment to 10 years. Later, she was convicted in the Zia Charitable Trust corruption case.

Amid the COVID-19 outbreak, the government temporarily released Zia from jail after 776 days through an executive order, suspending her sentence on March 25, 2020, with conditions that she would stay in her Gulshan house and not leave the country.

On August 6, after the regime change in Dhaka, Zia was completely freed by an order of Bangladesh President Mohammed Shahabuddin.

Zia served as the prime minister of Bangladesh from March 1991 to March 1996, and again from June 2001 to October 2006.