DHAKA, 3 September 2007 — The Anti-Corruption Commission (ACC) yesterday filed a 30 million taka graft case against detained former Prime Minister and Awami League President Hasina Wajed, already enmeshed in around half a dozen serious cases.

The commission alleged that Hasina accepted a 30 million taka ($435,000) bribe from a leading private power producer in a case filed with police, officer Jane Alam said.

“The Anti-Corruption Commission has accused her of taking the bribe in 1997 when she was prime minister. She used the money to buy a piece of land for the Bangabandhu Memorial Trust, a charity she leads,” Alam said.

Hasina, who was prime minister from 1996 to 2001, has also been accused in at least five more cases involving graft and murder. The 59-year-old leader, who is being held at a house inside the Parliament complex, is among 150 high-profile figures who have been arrested as part of an anti-graft campaign launched by an army-backed government that came to power in January.

She has denied all charges and told a court last month that they were aimed at forcing her out of politics. The government has rejected the claim. Bangladesh has been under emergency rule since January 11 when elections were canceled after months of violence over vote-rigging allegations made by Hasina’s party against the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP).

The BNP-led government of Khaleda Zia, the country’s last elected premier, held power until last October. Hasina and her bitter rival Khaleda are widely blamed for 16 years of misrule during which corruption became rampant in Bangladesh.

Meanwhile, Bangladesh’s leading rights group yesterday accused the country’s military-backed government of using scare tactics such as midnight arrests to end campus unrest last month. Police and paramilitaries clashed with students protesting emergency rule in pitched battles that left one dead and dozens injured, and led the government to impose a curfew.

The Odhikar group said the government had ignored basic rights in quelling the protests and noted five top academics and dozens of students were still detained without due legal process.

“Attacks on academics’ freedom of speech by arresting them in the middle of the night while a curfew is in place, instilling fear amongst teachers and students, is a practice the current administration must stop,” the group said.

“In particular, the fact that academics were arrested without a warrant; that they were held incommunicado for nearly 40 hours at an unknown location before being brought before a court; and that they were held in a facility called the Joint Interrogation Cell causes concern that rights under national and international law are not respected by the authorities.”

The statement came after three of the five academics became ill on Saturday while in custody and were moved to a hospital in northwestern city of Rajshahi.

The government had accused thugs acting on behalf of the country’s sidelined political parties of attempting to bring down the government through the protests.

The government, which came to power after an emergency was imposed following the cancellation of national polls in January, withdrew the curfew last week.