Hearing on graft case against Hasina July 25

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The High Court (HC) yesterday scheduled July 25 for the hearing of a petition by former prime minister and Awami League president Sheikh Hasina for quashing a four and a half years old graft case against her.

Following a sudden move by the state, an HC division bench decided to start the hearing of the petition for quashing the Meghnaghat Power plant graft case against Hasina after the Supreme Court’s (SC) summer vacation is over, which will start on June 8 and end on July 22.

Hasina filed the petition with the HC on December 2, 2002 for quashing the case and it stayed all proceedings of the case in the lower court.

Following the stay, Deputy Attorney General (DAG) Helaluddin Mollah on Monday moved to a HC bench and prayed for a hearing of Hasina’s petition. But after a submission by Hasina’s counsel the bench ordered to scrap the case off the cause list.

The DAG then moved to another HC bench on Tuesday praying for a hearing of the petition again, and this bench asked to include the matter on yesterday’s cause list.

The DAG also prayed for an early schedule for the hearing prompting the court to ask him to explain the urgency. The court also reminded him that only a few working days are left before the SC vacation.

The DAG argued that the matter is old. The court replied that it treats cases filed between 1992 and 1997 as old matters and hear those before the vacation while others are left for after the vacation.

Meanwhile, counsel for Hasina, Barrister Rokanuddin Mahmud, said in his submission that the case against Hasina should be heard separately from the cases against the other accused in connection with the same incident, as she was not named in the first information report. He said Hasina was implicated in the charge sheet only.

The investigation officer (IO) of the case submitted the charge sheet to the court on October 14, 2002 accusing former premier Hasina, former state minister for power and energy Prof Rafiqul Islam, former state minister Syed Abul Hossain and manger of Sako International KM Islam of being involved in corruption in the process of setting up Meghnaghat power plant.

The trial was initiated in a metropolitan special court on October 17, 2002.

Earlier, Gulam Mostafa, a director of the now defunct Bureau of Anti-corruption (Bac), had filed the case with Ramna police Station on December 11, 2001, accusing Prof Rafiqul Islam of misappropriating Tk 17.89 crore during the process of installing the power plant. But later in the charge sheet Hasina, Abul Hossain and KM Islam were also accused.

The other three accused had also filed separate petitions in 2003 for quashing the case against them.

Following Abul Hossain’s petition, a HC bench ordered hearings of all the four petitions for quashing the case a few years ago.

Yesterday the four petitions were brought back on the cause list and the court decided to hear all of them together after the SC vacation.

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