Bidisha gets HC bail in fraud case; no bar on release

The High Court granted bail to Bidisha Siddique, former wife of late President and Jatiya Party founder HM Ershad, in a fraud case, removing the immediate legal obstacle to her release from jail.

A bench comprising Justice Md Khairul Alam and Justice Md Rafizul Islam issued the order after hearing Bidisha’s bail petition. Her lawyers, Fazlur Rahman Khan and Masud Mia, represented her before the court. Masud Mia later told The Daily Star that no other case was pending against her.

Bidisha went to jail on Aug. 26 after police arrested her at a restaurant in Gulshan at about 8:30 p.m. the previous day. On May 20, a Dhaka metropolitan magistrate’s court had sentenced her to two years of rigorous imprisonment in the fraud case over the sale of a flat. The court also fined her Tk 10,000, with an additional month in jail if she failed to pay.

She was absent when the verdict was delivered, so the court issued an arrest warrant. Businessman Mosharraf Hossain filed the case on Feb. 7, 2008. The case statement identifies him as an importer and trader of sanitary products in Dhaka’s Mirpur-10 area.