Khaleda Zia’s verdict

Judge still typing testimony of witnesses

Judge still typing testimony of witnesses

Dhaka, Mar 5 (Just News): Jailed Bangladesh Nationalist Party chairperson Begum Khaleda Zia’s lawyers on Sunday said that the Zia Orphanage Trust case record was not sent to the High Court, which called for it 10 days ago, as the judge was still typing testimony of witnesses.

On February 22, the High Court bench of Justice M Enayetur Rahim and Justice Shahidul Karim accepted for hearing the appeal Khaleda Zia filed on February 20 against her sentence of five years and stayed the realisation of her fine in the case.

On February 25, the bench concluded the hearing in her bail petition but kept its order pending until getting the case records from the trial court. It called for the records on February 22.

On Sunday, Khaleda Zia’s lawyers Sanaullah Mia and Masud Ahmed Talukder quoted the judge of the Dhaka Special Judge’s Court, Akhtaruzzaman, as saying that he would take few more days to send the case record to the High Court as he could not complete typing the testimony of the witnesses and other related orders.

They said that the judge said this when they went to his court Sunday morning to know the reason for the delay in sending the record to the High Court.

Anti-Corruption Commission lawyer Khurshid Alam Khan, however, said that the 15-day timeframe set by the High Court for sending the record would expire on March 11 as the trial court received the order on February 25.

Khaleda Zia’s lawyer Zainul Abedin, also the Supreme Court Bar Association president, told reporters at a briefing at his office that the judge would have sent the case record to the High Court within 24 hours of receiving the order unless there was any government interfere.

Zainul urged the government not to do politics with the matter creating hindrance in sending the case record to the High Court.

He said that there was no precedence of writing or typing any order or testimony of witnesses after the pronouncement of the verdict.

The former prime minister filed the appeal on February 20 after getting the certified copy of the verdict the verdict, pronounced on February 8 jailing her for five years and her eldest son Tarique Rahman and four others for 10 years, on February 19.-New Age


(Justnews/ys/0020)