Khaleda lands in jail

Two rooms on the ground floor of the three-storey Kids Day Care Centre building have been provided for the accomodation of BNP chairperson Khaleda Zia. Prothom Alo File Photo
Two rooms on the ground floor of the three-storey Kids Day Care Centre building have been provided for the accomodation of BNP chairperson Khaleda Zia. Prothom Alo File Photo

Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) chairperson and former prime minister Khaleda Zia landed in jail on Thursday after a court sentenced her to five-year imprisonment in a graft case.

Amidst heightened security measures, the former prime minister was taken to Nazimuddin Road jail around 3:00pm straight from the trial court set up in capital’s Bakhshibazar.

A special judge court earlier in the day convicted former prime minister Khaleda, her son Tarique Rahman and four others in the Zia Orphanage Trust case.

The makeshift court has sentenced Khaleda to five years and the others to ten years in jail.

Officials in the jail said the authorities have allocated two rooms on the ground-floor of a three-storey building of the old central jail for Khaleda. The rooms were used as day care centre of the children of the accused in the past.

Khaleda has meanwhile written to the jail authorities so she can keep her personal aide Fatema with her in jail, but the authorities are yet to give its decision in this regard.

Security measures have been beefed up in and around the old jail with new close-circuit television cameras set up around the jail.