BNP acting chairman Tarique Rahman's close friend Giausuddin Al Mamun has filed a petition seeking stay on charge framing order in the Niko graft case.

Khurshid Alam Khan, lawyer of the Anti-Corruption Commission (ACC), confirmed about the petition on Wednesday.

"The copy of the plea now in my hand," he said.

On March 19, Dhaka Special Judge's Court-9 Judge Sheikh Hafizur Rahman framed the charges against BNP Chairperson Khaleda Zia and three other accused--former acting secretary for energy ministry Khondaker Shahidul Islam, its former senior assistant secretary CM Yusuf Hussain, and Giausuddin Al Mamun-- in the case.

The anti-graft body filed the case against five including Khaleda Zia with Tejgaon Police Station on December 9, 2007, for abusing power in signing a deal with Canadian company Niko for exploring and extracting gas.

The ACC on May 5, 2008 pressed charges against 11 people including Khaleda Zia. It accused them of incurring a loss of more than Taka 13 thousand crore of state exchequer by that deal.

Three of the accused in the case– Barrister Moudud Ahmed, who was in the BNP standing committee, AKM Mosharraf Hossain, former state minister for energy, and Md Shafiru Rahman, for secretary of the state-owned Bangladesh Petroleum Exploration and Production Company Limited (Bapex) – died before the trial could start and the charges against them were dropped.