Zia gets six more months in her Dhaka home

DHAKA - Former Bangladesh prime minister Khaleda Zia will not be evicted from her home here for six more months, the Dhaka High Court has said while extending her stay for the second time.

The court has stayed the government’s notice asking Zia to leave her British-era Dhaka cantonment house where she has been living for nearly three decades.

The Sheikh Hasina government says Zia manipulated allotment documents when the house was allotted to her after her husband, then president Ziaur Rahman, was slain in a military putsch in 1981.

The issue has acquired a political twist. Hasina herself asked her rival in parliament to quit the house so she could build homes for the families of army officers who were killed in a mutiny staged by troopers of the Bangladesh Rifles (BDR).

Fifty-seven officers were among the 74 killed during the February mutiny.

Justice Syed Refaat Ahmed and Justice Moyeenul Islam Chowdhury passed the extension order upon a prayer moved by Zia’s lawyers.

The matter has been fought in the court for the past many months. Zia’s supporters have staged protests in the past over the issue.