Exiled Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina on Monday launched a blistering attack on Nobel laureate Dr Muhammad Yunus and the Anti-Corruption Commission, calling today’s five-year jail sentence handed to her in the latest Purbachal plot case “nothing but Yunus’s personal revenge” and declaring the ACC a fully politicised tool being used as a smokescreen to hide the unelected regime’s own corruption and failures.
In a statement issued hours after the verdict, Sheikh Hasina said the ACC has become “a political mechanism controlled by an unelected government run by the Awami League’s opponents” and is being deliberately deployed to target only her party while turning a blind eye to massive cronyism under Yunus.
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“Yunus is using the ACC as a smokescreen to distract attention from his own governance collapse and from the ragtag coalition of extremists and opportunists who now hold power,” she charged, warning that the continuing judicial farce is “badly damaging Bangladesh’s international standing with key trading partners.”
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Monday’s ruling came from Dhaka Special Judge Court-4, where Judge Robiul Alam sentenced Sheikh Hasina to five years’ rigorous imprisonment, her sister Sheikh Rehana to seven years, and British Labour MP Tulip Siddiq–Rehana’s daughter-to two years over alleged irregularities in the allocation of a single 10-katha plot in the RAJUK Purbachal New Town Project.
Fourteen others, including former RAJUK officials, were also convicted. The trial, which began only months ago, was conducted entirely in absentia and concluded within minutes of the court opening on Monday morning.
The verdict marks the fourth Purbachal conviction in five days. On November 27, three separate special courts had already sentenced Sheikh Hasina to a total of 21 years (seven years in each case), her son Sajeeb Wazed Joy to 21 years, and her daughter Saima Wazed to three years over similar plot-allotment charges.
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Reacting to those earlier sentences last week, Sheikh Hasina had exposed what she called glaring hypocrisy: Yunus himself owns 4,080 katha in the same Purbachal project and has built a luxury resort there, while her family’s purchase of just 10 katha each at official government rates has been branded a “grave crime.”
Sajeeb Wazed Joy, speaking immediately after the November 27 verdicts, threw down an open challenge that remains unanswered: “Every step—application, allotment, payment—followed the letter of the law. Prove that any family member named owns any other property in Dhaka.”
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He warned that if such “false and fabricated cases” are used to bar the Awami League from next year’s election, the party will take to the streets and foil any vote that excludes pro-liberation forces.
With today’s additional sentences, Sheikh Hasina now faces a cumulative 26 years behind bars across the four cases, while her family members have been handed more than 54 years in total—all decided in trials widely condemned as lacking due process.
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