By IANS
Dhaka : A Bangladesh court has invalidated the procedure under which the government has been conducting its anti-corruption drive. The Dhaka High Court has accepted a plea from jailed former prime minister Sheikh Hasina challenging the demand by the country’s Anti-Corruption Commission (ACC) that she submit a statement of her wealth.
The ruling could provide Hasina a brief reprieve and makes the ACC’s task difficult as it has adopted the same procedure to issue notices to over 200 people.
The court ruling has ACC officials worried “about the fate of other similar notices”, The Daily Star said Thursday.
Several officials of the commission and its legal experts said all notices asking a number of people to submit wealth statements might also face legal complexities.
The officials said if these cases also go to the higher court and similar orders are given, the massive drive being conducted by the anti-graft watchdog against high profile graft suspects would slow down.
Hasina’s counsel Rafique ul Huq said after the verdict: “As a result of the high court verdict, all the notices the ACC has issued asking people to submit wealth statement will be cancelled.”
However, former army chief and ACC Chairperson Hasan Mashhud Chowdhury said: “We are not worried or demoralised by the judgement as we know we must go through legal processes … We have the option to go to higher court and we will do so.”
Asked if there was any weakness in the proceedings for preparing the case, Mashhud said: “There was absolutely no weakness in the ACC work”.
Hasina has been detained since July 16 in a graft case. A lower court rejected her plea that she could not function from her prison cell and that the banks where she had accounts were not forthcoming with details she required to file her statement.
She won an appeal in the high court, but the ACC got it stayed by the Supreme Court.
The anti-corruption drive that began in February has netted over 200 high-profile former ministers, lawmakers, officials and businessmen, while the jails are full with about 200,000 persons detained for different crimes.
Another former prime minister, Khaleda Zia, is in jail and so are both her sons, Tareq and Arafat. They are among the 200-plus asked to submit wealth statements.
Problems for Hasina, Zia and their family members and political associates are far from over with the government slapping a number of charges on each of them, political analysts said.
Another Dhaka court on Wednesday asked the Dhaka central jail to produce Hasina on Nov 28 before hearing the $5 million extortion case filed against her, New Age newspaper reported.