A court in Dhaka has fixed Nov 15 for the hearing of indictment in GATCO graft case against BNP chief Khaleda Zia and 19 other.
Dhaka Special Judge -3 Abu Syed Dilzar scheduled the hearing on Thursday, Hannan Bhuiyan, who is on the defence team for Khaleda, told Bangla Tribune.
The former prime minister is accused of causing a loss of Tk 145.63 million to the state exchequer by awarding a container-handling job at Inland Container Depot (ICD) in Dhaka and at Chittagong Port to GATCO.
The case also accused Khaleda’s younger son Arafat Rahman Coco, who died in 2016.
The ACC filed the case on Sep 2, 2007 during the military-installed caretaker regime and the next day the BNP chief and Coco were arrested from their Dhaka Cantonment home.
The case was included under the Emergency Rule Act on Sep 18 the same year.
On Sep 27, 2007, Khaleda and Coco filed two petitions with the High Court, challenging the legality of including the case under the Emergency Rule Act and seeking a stay order on the trial's proceedings.
Three days later, the High Court stayed the proceedings and issued a rule asking why the case's inclusion under the Act should not be declared illegal.
The Appellate Division later scrapped the stay order.
In 2008, Khaleda filed another petition challenging the legality of the case filed under the ACC Act, following which the High Court once again stayed the case proceedings.
After the ACC’s recent initiative to revive the case, the High Court resumed hearing and lifted the freeze in the final order on Aug 5 in 2016.
It also ordered Khaleda to surrender before the trial court within two months after receiving the full verdict, which was published in February 2017. She appeared before court on Apr 5 and secured bail.
In August last year, Khaleda failed to secure the Supreme Court’s nod to start an appeal against the Gatoc graft case.
The top court turned down her leave-to-appeal plea, clearing all legal obstacles to proceeding with the case.