Khaleda Zia charged with graft, sent to jail
The bail pleas of Ms Khaleda, who is also chairperson of the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP), and her son, were rejected by the chief metropolitan magistrate after which she was sent to a sub-jail.
The court granted seven-day remand of Arafat Rahman to police. Ms Khaleda’s elder son, Tarique Rahman, has been in jail since March.
Ms Khaleda had been kept in virtual confinement in her Dhaka cantonment home since April. Immediately before her arrest, Ms Khaleda had expelled the secretary general and a joint secretary-general, Abdul Mannan Bhuiyan and Ashraf Hossain, for ‘conspiring’ against the BNP. She appointed Khandaker Delwar Hossain, former parliamentary chief whip and a member of the party’s standing committee, as the new secretary-general.