Graft cases against Hasina, Zia being reviewed

September 16th, 2009 RANCHI - The vigilance department of Jharkhand will seek help from the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) to probe the assets of a former chief minister as well as other ex-ministers. The vigilance department has submitted a detailed status report of progress made in investigating the assets of former ministers to the Jharkhand High Court.

August 6th, 2009 DHAKA - The Bangladesh Anti Corruption Commission has pressed charges against opposition leader and Chairperson of the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) Khaleda Zia, her son Tarique Rahman and four others for embezzlement of Tk 2.10 crore by forming the fraudulent Zia Orphanage Trust. This is the first move by an anti-graft body against high profile graft suspects since the Awami League-led grand alliance came to power last year.

July 31st, 2009 DHAKA - Bangladesh Prime Minister and Awami League chief Sheikh Hasina Friday removed four "reformists" from the party's presidium and inducted six new ministers in the government as part of sweeping changes. 'Reformists' are those who attempted intra-party reforms while Hasina was in jail on graft charges during 2007-08 and whose loyalty to her was doubtful, media reports said.

July 28th, 2009 DHAKA - Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, her sister Rehana and their children will get Special Security Force (SSF) protection in view of threats to their lives, as per an executive order. Hasina Monday chaired a cabinet meeting that approved the Father of the Nation's Family Members' Security Bill 2009 with immediate effect "to ensure lifelong and foolproof security", New Age newspaper reported Tuesday.

July 5th, 2009 DHAKA - Advisors of Bangladesh's former caretaker government have denied the charge that they were responsible for serving 'poisoned' food to Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina when she was in jail and have demanded a fair probe. Hasina's current health advisor, Syed Mudassar Ali, repeated the charge levelled a week earlier by deputy leader in parliament Syeda Sajeda Choudhury.

May 17th, 2009 DHAKA - A Bangladeshi court Sunday cleared Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina Wazed of an extortion charge brought against her by a businessman two years ago, court officials said. A judge of the special court, set up during the previous military-backed government of Fakhruddin Ahmed to provide speedy trials for graft cases, mostly against politicians, ordered the charges against Hasina withdrawn.

May 7th, 2009 DHAKA - A Dhaka court Wednesday sent two former Bangladeshi ministers, convicted in absentia in graft charges, to long prison terms as they surrendered before the trial court, officials said. Special court Judge Arifur Rahman ordered former communications minister Anwar Hossain Manju and former state minister for law Shahjahan Omar to jail on their surrender.

May 2nd, 2009 DHAKA - Bangladesh's mainstream opposition leader Khaleda Zia Saturday asked her arch political rival Sheikh Hasina's four-month-old government to quit over failure in 'curbing terrorism and easing the power and water crisis'. 'Relinquish power as there is still time, don't compel the people to drive you away.

May 1st, 2009 DHAKA - With restoration of democracy after last December's election, Bangladesh's politicians are approaching the judiciary to drop criminal cases filed against them by the previous military-backed caretaker government, saying they were 'politically motivated'. A month after Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina approached the court to drop 11 'politically motivated' cases against her and her associates, her political rival Khaleda Zia and her family members followed suit Thursday.

April 14th, 2009 KOLKATA - West Bengal Police in Kolkata arrested a mastermind of a militant outfit, Harkat-ul-Jihadi-Islami (HuJI), and suspected to have been involved in the grenade attack on Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina. Officials of the Criminal Investigation Department (CID) arrested a man identified as Mufti Ibrahim, alleged to have been the person behind the attacks on Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina in 2000 and 2004 in Dhaka.

February 26th, 2009 DHAKA - Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, in an address to the nation Thursday afternoon, asked the mutinous Bangladesh Rifles (BDR) troopers to lay down their arms and warned that she would take 'strong action if compelled to do so'. Hasina, in the address at about 2.30 p.m., said she had granted general amnesty to the rebels and assured them that they would not be harmed in any way if they give up their 'suicidal' mission.

February 11th, 2009 DHAKA - Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina wants a white paper published on corruption during the 2001-06 tenure of her main political rival Khaleda Zia. 'Of course, the white papers should be published,' Hasina told Parliament Wednesday amid thumping of desks by the treasury bench lawmakers.

January 6th, 2009 DHAKA - Bangladesh's first democratically elected government in over two years got to work Wednesday, as Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina attended office after a landslide victory in the Dec 29 poll. She was sworn in as the prime minister Tuesday evening, ending the tenure of a military-backed caretaker government that held office for a week short of two years.

January 2nd, 2009 DHAKA - With newly-elected members of parliament taking oath Saturday, the process of ushering in a democratic government in Bangladesh has begun after a gap of nearly two years. Sheikh Hasina, who led her Awami League (AL) and a nine-party alliance to a landslide victory in last Monday's poll, will be invited to be the prime minister by President Iajuddin Ahmed once the alliance members, likely to meet late Saturday, write to him after electing her as the parliamentary party leader.

December 25th, 2008 DHAKA - The gloves are off in the last round of the poll campaign in Bangladesh with the two former prime ministers, Sheikh Hasina and Khaleda Zia, levelling serious charges against each other. While Zia has accused 'a party' of trying to kill her, leaving nobody in doubt who she means, Hasina Friday said Zia and her Islamist alliance, in power during 2001-06, had 'siphoned off' Taka 200 billion (over three billion US dollars) from the country, Star Online reported.