Dhaka Bureau: The Acting Chairman of BNP, Tarek Rahman, and his wife, Dr. The court has framed charges against Jobaida Rahman. On Thursday, April 13, Dhaka Senior Metropolitan Special Judge Md. Achaduzzaman filed this complaint. As a result, the formal trial of the case began. In addition, the judge ordered that Tarek-Zobaida cannot hire a lawyer at his own expense. Pro-BNP lawyers staged a protest in the courthouse as a result of the complaint.
Earlier, on April 9, their lawyers applied for the appointment of a lawyer at their own expense on behalf of the absconding Tarek-Zobaida. After the hearing, the court fixed this day for the order. The court had issued an arrest warrant against Tariq Rahman and Zobaida on November 1 of last year.
According to the complaint in the case, the ACC filed this case on September 26, 2007 at the capital’s Kafrul police station on charges of owning Tk 4 crore, 81 lakh, 53 thousand, and 561 beyond the declared income, concealing the information of assets, and acquiring assets outside the known income. In the case of Tariq Rahman, Zobayda Rahman and his mother, i.e., Tariq Rahman’s mother-in-law, Iqbal Mand Banu, were accused. In 2008, a charge sheet was filed against the three. Tarek’s mother-in-law, Iqbal Mand Banu, has been dropped from the case because she died. After that, Jobaida applied to the High Court to cancel the case. In the same year, in view of this application, the High Court issued a ruling suspending the proceedings in the case. ACC appealed against this to the Appellate Division. The Appellate Division upheld the order of the High Court. After the final hearing, on April 12, 2017, the High Court dismissed Jobaider’s application to dismiss the case (rule discharge).
At the same time, Zobayda was directed to appear in court within eight weeks in that case. Jobaida filed a leave-to-appeal against the dismissal order of the High Court that year.
On April 1, 2021, after the hearing of Zobaida Rahman’s leave-to-appeal, the court fixed April 8 of that year for the order. But it got delayed due to Corona. Almost a year later, on April 7 of last year, when the four-judge appellate bench headed by the Chief Justice heard the matter again, the court fixed April 13 as the date for the order. Then, on April 13, the Appellate Division of the Supreme Court upheld the High Court’s judgment by rejecting the leave-to-appeal by a four-member Appellate Bench headed by Chief Justice Hasan Faiz Siddiqui.
