Dhaka, Former parliamentary speaker Shirin Sharmin Chaudhury was on Sunday released from a high security jail on the outskirts of Bangladesh capital on a court order, five days after she was arrested on charges of an “attempted murder.”
Earlier in the day, a Dhaka court had granted bail to country’s first female and three time speaker 59-year-old Chaudhury on a bond of Taka 50,000 following a hearing in an attempted murder case linked to the July-August student-led protest of 2024.
“She was released from Kashimpur Central Jail after scrutiny of the court’s bail order,” prison department spokesperson Jannat-ul Farhad said.
Media reports said Chaudhury walked out of Kashimpur prison in the evening when her family members received her.
Chaudhury served as the first female speaker of the Bangladesh Jatiya Sangsad from April 2013 until September 2024. She was then elected as a Member of Parliament from the Rangpur-6 constituency.
She was arrested on Tuesday by the Dhaka Metropolitan Police’s Detective Branch in connection with the case filed at Lalbagh police station.
Local media had quoted Deputy Commissioner of the DMP’s media division, M N Nasir Uddin, as saying: “Cases have been filed against her over incidents during the July movement at Banani and Uttara police stations in the capital. There is also a case against her in Rangpur.”
Chaudhury is the first prominent figure from the deposed prime minister Sheikh Hasina’s toppled regime to be arrested under the newly elected Bangladesh Nationalist Party government of Prime Minister Tarique Rahman.
Her arrest came a day after Bangladesh Parliament passed a law endorsing an order issued by Muhammad Yunus’ interim government disbanding Hasina’s Awami League.
Police said she was one of the several suspects involved in the attempted murder of a youth during the 2024 violent street protests dubbed July Uprising that eventually toppled Hasina’s government on August 5, 2024.
Chaudhury’s bail was granted as her lawyers argued that there were no specific allegations against her while she was critically ill and “close to death,” suffering from heart disease. She had already suffered one heart attack amid high blood pressure, diabetes and poor eyesight, he said.
Despite being non-partisan as the speaker, Chaudhury went to parliament on Hasina’s party Awami League’s ticket.
Chaudhury had not been seen in public since August 5, when Hasina took refuge in India.
President Mohammed Shahabuddin dissolved the parliament a day after Hasina fled the country.
Although constitutional rules dictate that the Speaker remains in office until a successor takes the oath, Chaudhury opted to quit before that transition.
She originally entered the parliament in 2009 through a reserved seat for women and served as the state minister for women and children affairs before her elevation to the speaker’s chair.
In November 2025, after a controversial trial in absentia, a special Bangladeshi tribunal handed down the death sentence to Hasina for committing crimes against humanity in her efforts to tame the July uprising.
Most of Hasina’s senior party leaders are in jail or on the run at home and abroad to evade charges such as committing “genocide” to tame the student-led protests, during which over 800 persons died in the violence, as per the interim government’s claim.
This article was generated from an automated news agency feed without modifications to text.
