Dhaka — Former parliament speaker Shirin Sharmin Chaudhury was released on bail on Sunday, five days after she was arrested in a case related to her alleged involvement in the suppression of the 2024 uprising that ousted former prime minister Sheikh Hasina.
Chaudhury was freed from the custody at Gazipur’s Kashimpur Women’s Central Prison at around 6:30 pm, after a court earlier in the day approved her bail.
She was arrested on Tuesday at a relative’s home in Dhaka’s Dhanmondi residential area and subsequently sent to jail pending an investigation into the case.
Prison authorities said her bail documents arrived at the prison in the afternoon. After verification and completion of formalities, she was released in the evening. Her lawyer and a relative were present with her at the time.
Dhaka’s Additional Chief Metropolitan Magistrate Md. Zakir Hossain granted her bail in an attempted murder case filed at Lalbagh Police Station in the capital. The case was filed over an alleged attempt to murder a person named Ashraful, also known as Fahim, in connection with the July uprising.
Earlier, on April 7, the court rejected a two-day remand prayer filed against her and ordered her sent to jail.
Chaudhury is the first female speaker of the Jatiya Sangsad (parliament), having been elected on April 30, 2013, after the then-speaker Abdul Hamid was elected president of the republic.
She held the position until her resignation in September 2024, nearly a month after Hasina was ousted on August 5, 2024, following the uprising.
Most top leaders of Hasina’s Awami League party went into hiding after an interim administration led by Nobel laureate Muhammad Yunus assumed office on August 8, 2024. The Awami League leadership and government ministers were accused in numerous cases, and their homes and businesses were vandalized and looted during the initial period of the interim administration’s tenure.
Chaudhury had been untraceable for a long time after her resignation, as President Mohammed Shahabuddin dissolved parliament soon after the interim administration took over.
