Courts in Dhaka has ordered the arrest of BNP chief Khaleda Zia in two cases over slandering freedom fighters and celebrating her birthday on Aug 15, the day Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman was killed in 1975.
The warrant for the former prime minister, who is now in jail for graft, was issued on Thursday after two separate metropolitan magistrate courts heard the matters.
In November 2016, one AB Siddique, president of the Jananetri Parishad, filed a case against Khaleda over slandering the Liberation War and the freedom fighters.
The BNP chief was sued over her remarks expressing doubts on the Liberation War’s death toll figure.
Earlier in August the same year, Gazi Zahirul Islam, a former joint general secretary of Dhaka Union of Journalists, filed a case over celebrating birthday on Aug 15, the National Mourning Day.
The case alleges that Khaleda's intent to celebrate her birthday was to 'undermine Bangabandhu.'
Copies of Khaleda’s passport, marriage certificate, school leaving exam’s mark sheet as well as a 1991 news report on her biography ran by national daily ‘Dainik Bangla’ were submitted to the court.
The BNP celebrates the birthday every year on this day, the same day Bangabandhu Shiekh Mujibur Rahman and most of his family members were brutally killed in 1975.
She had been celebrating the birthday by cutting cake at her Gulshan office in the first hours in past years.