The High Court (HC) will pass its order at 2pm today (Monday) on a bail petition filed by Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) chairperson Khaleda Zia that challenged the verdict of the lower court that sentenced her to five years of imprisonment in the Zia Orphanage Trust graft case. The HC bench, comprising Justice M Enayetur  ahim and Justice Shahidul Karim, was scheduled to pass the order yesterday. But the court deferred the date as the case records from the lower court did not reach the HC yesterday (Sunday) morning. The relevant section of the HC received the records of the Zia Orphanage Trust graft case around 1pm yesterday (Sunday) from Mokarram Hossain, bench assistant of the Special Judge's Court-5 of Dhaka. The relevant records of the cases contain 5,373 pages, sources said.

The HC bench will now scrutinise the relevant records of the case and pass its order after that on the bail petition of Khaleda Zia today (Monday) afternoon.

On February 22, the HC bench had asked the special trial court, which sentenced the BNP chief to a five-year jail term in the Zia Orphanage Trust case, to submit all the case documents related to the verdict within 15 days.

On February 22, the HC had accepted Khaleda’s appeal challenging the trial court verdict sentencing her to five years’ imprisonment in the graft case. The fine order against the BNP chief was later stayed. Earlier, on February 25, after hearing Khaleda’s bail petition, the same bench of the HC kept its order pending till it received the records of the Zia Orphanage Trust graft case from the trial court. On February 20, the BNP chairperson filed an appeal in the HC, challenging her sentencing in the graft case. On February 8, the special judge’s court-5 of Dhaka sentenced Khaleda to five years’ rigorous imprisonment after it had found her and five others guilty in the graft case.

The court also awarded jail sentences to Tarique Rahman, now the acting chairman of the BNP, and four others for 10 years and fined them Tk 2.10 crore, saying that all the six convicts have to pay the fine in equal amounts. Khaleda was sent to Old Central Jail with the conviction warrant after the verdict. The trial court took more than 11 days to provide the certified copies of the verdict to Khaleda, which were given on February 19. The BNP chief was in jail for more than a month by the time the court sent the case dockets to the HC on Sunday.

The Anti-Corruption Commission (ACC) filed the graft case with Ramna police station in July 2008, accusing the six of misappropriating a sum of over Tk. 2.1 crore that had come from a foreign bank as grants for orphans.