Hasina granted bail

Former Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina Wajed yesterday appeared in a court in Dhaka and was granted bail in a corruption case involving a power plant project.

The Bureau of Anti-Corruption filed the Meghnaghat Power Plant corruption case and submitted a chargesheet on October 14 against four people, including Hasina, former State Minister for Energy, Rafiqul Islam and Syed Abul Hossain MP.

The bureau charged them with corruption involving about Tk178 million in awarding the contract of the project to a foreign firm and filed the cases with the police on December 11 last year.

Rokonuddin Mahmud, who submitted the bail petition for Hasina, told the court that her name was not mentioned in the FIR. "Without any investigations, the police, influenced by the government, filed the chargesheet. The allegations against her are baseless and unfounded," he said.

The court let her go on a bail of Tk50,000 pending trial and allowed her lawyers to continue the case on behalf of the Awami League President.

Hasina said the government had implicated her in this "false case" to belittle her politically.

Mahmud said the tender of a Chinese firm, out of two bidders, was accepted at first. But for technical reasons, a re-tendering process was conducted and another Chinese firm was permitted to work for the project.