Former Bangladesh Prime Minister Khaleda Zia was acquitted on Wednesday in a corruption case by the country’s High Court. Zia, the chairperson of the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP), was cleared of all charges in the Zia Charitable Trust corruption case, in which she had been sentenced to seven years in prison by a lower court on October 29, 2018.
The High Court’s ruling on Wednesday rejected the verdict from the trial court that had convicted Khaleda and two others in the case, as reported by The Daily Star. The case stemmed from accusations that Khaleda and her associates had misused power to raise funds for the trust from undisclosed sources.
In April 2019, the High Court had earlier accepted Khaleda’s appeal against the conviction and imprisonment, temporarily halting a portion of the lower court’s verdict, which had also imposed a fine of Tk 10 lakh on her. The case had been filed by the Anti-Corruption Commission at Tejgaon Police Station on August 8, 2011.
Along with Khaleda, three other individuals were convicted in the case, including her former political secretary Harris Chowdhury, who is now deceased.
Khaleda, who had been under house arrest for five years, was released on August 6 this year after the president granted her clemency, pardoning her in two other cases following Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina’s resignation and departure from the country.
Previously, in 2018, Khaleda was sentenced to five years in prison in the Zia Orphanage Trust corruption case, and the High Court had later increased her sentence to 10 years.
