NEW DELHI: Paving the way for the political revival of Khalida Zia, who could serve as an alternative to ousted leader Sheikh Hasina, the Bangladesh high court on Wednesday acquitted the former prime minister severing a 7-year sentence in a corruption case.
Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) chief Khaleda Zia was sentenced to jail by a Dhaka lower court in the Zia Charitable Trust corruption case in 2018.
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 the 79-year-old leader and three others of abusing power to raise funds for the trust from unknown sources, the Daily Star news portal reported.
The 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.
However, later, she was convicted in the Zia Charitable Trust corruption case.
Amid the Covid 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.
After Sheikh Hasina was ousted from Bangladesh in the wake of a mass uprising against her government, 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.