The Appellate Division of the Supreme Court, in its full verdict, has observed that the conviction of former prime minister and BNP chairperson Begum Khaleda Zia in the Zia Orphanage Trust graft case was ‘misconceived’ and amounted to ‘a travesty of justice,’ as both the trial court and the High Court had misapplied the law and based their judgments on unfounded assumptions.
A bench headed by chief justice Syed Refaat Ahmed on November 11, 2024, had allowed Khaleda Zia’s appeal against the High Court Division verdict, which had earlier doubled her prison term from five to ten years. The full text of the verdict was released on the Supreme Court’s website on Wednesday.
The apex court found that the High Court wrongly enhanced Khaleda’s sentence while exercising its revisional powers, describing the move as an ‘abuse of discretion’ and the judgment itself as ‘misconceived’ and ‘a travesty of justice.’
It ruled that Khaleda’s conviction was based on flawed reasoning, a lack of evidence, and violations of fundamental principles of criminal law.
The court observed that under the Criminal Law Amendment Act, offences under Section 409 of the Penal Code and Section 5(2) of the Prevention of Corruption Act, 1947 are triable only by a Special Judge. While the High Court had revisional jurisdiction, it ‘misused this power’ by enhancing the sentence without properly evaluating the evidence, the verdict said.
In its findings, the Appellate Division noted that there was no proof of entrustment or misappropriation to support the charge of criminal breach of trust. The prosecution failed to prove the case beyond reasonable doubt, and both lower courts convicted Khaleda ‘on trumped-up charges’ based on hypothetical presumptions rather than legal evidence.
The court further observed that the Anti-Corruption Commission (ACC) exceeded its jurisdiction by filing the case over a private trust without a valid complaint, rendering the entire proceedings legally barred and void.
Declaring that the trial and High Court verdicts had no legal basis, the Appellate Division set them aside, granting full relief to all accused persons.
The Zia Orphanage Trust case was filed by the Anti-Corruption Commission in 2008, during the military-backed interim regime.
