Khaleda now free

BNP Chairperson Khaleda Zia was released from detention on Tuesday, a day after Sheikh Hasina resigned as the prime minister and fled the country.

The decision of her release was taken from a meeting of President Mohammed Shahabuddin with the three armed forces’ chiefs, various political party leaders, representatives of civil society, and the leaders of the Anti-Discrimination Students’ Movement, said a press release sent to the media from Bangabhaban.

The former prime minister, Khaleda Zia, landed in jail after a lower court had sentenced her to five years’ imprisonment in the Zia Orphanage Trust corruption case on February 8, 2018. Later in the same year, she was found guilty in another corruption case.

Amid the coronavirus outbreak, the then government on March 25, 2020, temporarily freed her from jail through an executive order suspending her sentence on the conditions that she will stay in her residence in Dhaka and not leave the country.