The High Court on Thursday dismissed a sabotage case lodged in 2015 against former prime minister and Bangladesh Nationalist Party chairperson Khaleda Zia and cleared the way for the acquittal of BNP acting chairperson Tarique Rahman in a sedition case.
The bench of Justice AKM Asaduzzaman and Justice Syed Enayet Hossain found the charges against Khaleda to be baseless and observed that the police filed a 鈥榤echanical charge sheet鈥� against her in 2016.
According to the court, Khaleda was initially not implicated in the case filed by a sub-inspector at Darus Salam police station in Dhaka but her name was added later allegedly in a bid to harass her.
Khaleda, who remains on bail, had contested the case by filing an application with the High Court in 2017, challenging the legality of the charges.
The case was part of a series of legal proceedings she had been facing over the years, totaling 37 cases.
Of the cases, 19 were so far dismissed by courts while sentences in the Zia Orphanage Trust and the Zia Charitable Trust cases were remitted following the political shift on August 5 when the government of Awami League, the arch-rival of the BNP, was ousted amid a student-mass uprising.
The same High Court bench dismissed sedition charges against Tarique Rahman and Ekushey Television chairman Abdus Salam, former ETV journalists Mahathir Farooki Khan and Kanak Sarwar stating that the case was unlawfully initiated.
Tarique has been residing in London since 2008.
The court clarified that prior permission from the home ministry, required for filing a court case for a sedition charge, was bypassed in this instance and made the proceedings 鈥榣iable to be quashed.鈥�
The sedition case filed with the Tajgaon police station on January 8, 2015 alleged that Tarique had made comments against the county鈥檚 founding president Sheikh Mujibur Rahman at a UK-based event which ETV broadcast live and caused 鈥榓narchy鈥� in the country.
Senior lawyers Jamiruddin Sircar, Zainul Abedin, and Mahbub Uddin Khokon, along with juniors SM Shahjahan and Kayser Kamal, represented Khaleda and Tarique, while Shahdeen Malik and his junior Tayeb-Ul-Islam appeared for Abdus Salam.
Deputy attorney general Jashim Sarkar did not oppose the dismissals.