A special court Thursday summarily rejected the bail prayer of detained former Prime Minister and Awami League president Sheikh Hasina in the Niko graft case, reports UNB.
Passing the order, Judge AK Roy said since the state of emergency is in place, there is no scope for entertaining the bail petition as the Emergency Power Rules (EPR) revokes the right to seek bail by an accused facing graft charges under the Corruption Prevention Act 1947.
Hasina filed the bail petition on June 1.
The court also turned down impromptu, on similar grounds, another bail petition moved Thursday by a counsel for co-accused former state minister for power Prof Rafiqul Islam.
After passing the orders, the court, upon defence plea that they were still unprepared, again deferred the arraignment hearing to June 10.
The Anti-Corruption Commission (ACC) public prosecutors, who were ready to open the case Thursday, opposed the repeated defence plea for deferment as "unwarranted".
They said relevant papers and documents relating to the Niko case are always available during court hours for examination by the defence counsel. So, there is no reason for granting time extension as "the prosecution also has certain limitations", they added.
As the court resumed at 10:07 am after Hasina, Prof Rafiqul Islam, the former state minister for energy and power, and its ex-secretary Dr Tawfique-e-Elahi Chowdhury were produced before the court amid tight security.
On December 9 last year, the ACC filed the case with Tejgaon Police Station against Hasina and others, accusing them of collaborating with one another and awarding gas- extraction work at Chhatak, Kamta and Feni gas fields to the Canadian company, Niko Resources, by cheating to gain personal financial benefit.
On May 7, the ACC submitted charge-sheet against Sheikh Hasina and eight others for awarding gas-exploration-and-extraction deal to the Canadian company through alleged corruption and abuse of power.
It is also alleged in the charge sheet that the work was given to Niko in an illegal way without floating tender, allowing it to extract 1,794 billion cubic feet (bcf) of gas from a reserve of 2,834 bcf. This misdeal is said to have caused the country a loss of Tk 136.30 billion at the rate of the then price of each million-cubic-feet gas at Tk 75.9783.
