The Law Ministry on Thursday received a petition seeking another extended suspension of BNP Chairperson Khaleda Zia’s jail term sent by the Homer Ministry.
“The Law Ministry has received a file from the Home Ministry regarding the extension of Khaleda Zia's release term by suspending her sentence. We’ll send it back to the Home Ministry with our opinions,” Law Minister Anisul Huq told UNB.
Replying to a question about whether the BNP chief will be allowed to go abroad this time, the minister said, he still did not see the file. “I’ve not received the file yet. So, I can’t tell you what the file contains.”
He, however, said the government first released Khaleda in 2020 with two conditions and her release term was extended several times with those conditions. “I think the previous conditions will also remain this time.”
The BNP Chairperson younger brother Shamim Eskandar submitted a fresh application recently to the Home Ministry seeking a further extension to the suspended jail term of his sister as her release period will end on March 24 next.
In the application, he also urged the government to relax the conditions of the BNP chief’s release and allow her to go abroad for treatment.
In the previous applications, Khaleda’s family also sought permission to send her abroad for medical treatment.
This is the seventh time the BNP chief’s family sought an extension to her suspended jail term. The government accepted all the previous applications but did not give Khaleda permission to go abroad for treatment.
On various occasions, the law minister explained that there was no legal scope to relax the conditions given by the government during Khaleda’s first release through an executive order.
Amid the coronavirus outbreak, the government temporarily freed Khaleda Zia from jail through an executive order by suspending her sentence on March 25, 2020, with conditions that she would stay at her Gulshan house and would not leave the country. Since then, her release term has been extended every six months following the family's plea.
The government has so far extended the convicted former prime minister’s conditional release six times, with the last extension on September 18, 2022.
Khaleda was sent to the Old Dhaka Central Jail as a lower court sentenced her to five years' imprisonment in the Zia Orphanage Trust corruption case on February 8, 2018. Later, she was found guilty and convicted in another corruption case the same year.
The 77-year-old BNP chief has been staying at her Gulshan residence since her release in 2020. She also received treatment at Evercare Hospital in the capital six times since she was infected with Covid-19 in April 2021
As per her physicians, Khaleda has been suffering from various ailments, including liver cirrhosis, arthritis, diabetes, kidney, lung, heart, and eye problems.
They have long been saying that the BNP chief needs to receive treatment in any advanced medical centre abroad for her critical diseases, including liver cirrhosis.