A top Bangladesh court ruled Wednesday opposition leader Khaleda Zia's trial over embezzlement charges should go ahead in a case that could see her jailed for life, a prosecutor said.

The High Court rejected the former two-time premier's bid to quash the trial which had been scheduled to start in a lower court this week after she was indicted on charges of embezzling more than $650,000.

A fund created to compensate victims of Bangladesh's worst industrial disaster made its first payments Tuesday as the country prepared to mark the first anniversary of the Rana Plaza garment factory collapse.

The payments were made as a Geneva-based international labor group blasted Western retailers for their "woefully inadequate" contributions to the fund set up by the International Labor Organization (ILO).

Bangladesh police said Tuesday they will press murder charges against the owner of a nine-storey building that collapsed and killed 1,135 garment workers last April, the worst industrial disaster in the country's history.

Sohel Rana, owner of the Rana Plaza factory complex on the outskirts of the capital Dhaka, was one of around 40 people who would be charged in connection with the disaster, said lead investigator Bijoy Krishna Kar.

Maoist rebels killed three soldiers guarding polling officials in central India on Wednesday, highlighting security concerns in the world's biggest elections as the second phase of voting got under way.

The rebels staged the attack in Chhattisgarh state in the country's insurgency-racked center one day before polling is held there, as voters in the restive northeast of the country cast their ballots.

Two students were detained in Bangladesh's port city of Chittagong after they were attacked by a mob over allegations they defamed the Prophet Mohammed on Facebook, police said Tuesday.

Police filed primary charges against the two 18-year-olds under the country's Information Communications Technology (ICT) laws after investigators found anti-religious comments on their Facebook pages, local police chief Atiq Ahmed Chowdhury told Agence France Presse.

Bangladesh war crimes investigators moved Tuesday to outlaw the country's largest Islamic party, accusing it of genocide and other atrocities during the 1971 bloody struggle for independence.

Government investigators handed a report detailing war crimes allegations against Jamaat-e-Islami to prosecutors, in the latest move against the party which has banned from contesting January elections.

Bangladesh opposition leader Khaleda Zia was ordered Wednesday to stand trial over charges that she and her associates embezzled more than $650,000 in a case that could see her jailed for life.

The two-time former premier will go on trial from April 21, according to lawyers at a hearing of a special anti-corruption court in Dhaka which was held only weeks after her arch rival Sheikh Hasina was re-elected.

An Islamic militant from a banned group who had escaped from a prison van was killed in a gunfight in northern Bangladesh Monday hours after being recaptured, police said.

Rakib Hasan and two other convicts from the outlawed Jamayetul Mujahideen Bangladesh (JMB) escaped Sunday after attackers hurled bombs and opened fire at the van in the northern district of Mymensingh, killing a policeman.

Bangladesh's High Commissioner to Kenya Wahidur Rahman has been attacked and slightly injured during a robbery at his Nairobi home, police said Sunday.

Nairobi detective Nicholas Kamwende said two of the diplomat's local guards had been detained for questioning after Saturday night's attack.

A Bangladesh court jailed a bus driver and his helper for life on Thursday for the rape of a teenage girl, a crime that sparked angry protests in the country.

A district judge in the town of Manikganj delivered the sentences after finding the helper guilty of raping the garment worker, while the driver was convicted of aiding and abetting him, prosecutor Abdus Salam told Agence France Presse.