Osman Gani, a former chief conservator of forests who hogged the headlines as a ‘forest gobbler,’ now passes his days in the Dhaka central jail where none of his relatives but a distant nephew bothered to meet him. He has already passed six out of the 12 years he was sentenced to imprisonment, keeping an extremely low-profile not typical of such a high-profile bureaucrat, jail officials said.
Osman appears unwilling to mix with others in jail and does not expect any visitor, they said.
Some jail officials said that Osman was not even interested in obtaining bail as he considered that he had
much better a life in jail than outside.
The visitor’s register shows that Osman had no visitor but a distant nephew, Mamun, who also rarely visited him.
‘The once powerful officer who came to be known as ‘the king of forests’ in the forest department takes food supplied for other inmates. There was no instance that food had been sent to him from outside. His nephew rarely comes and rarely brings a packet of biscuit,’ a jail superintendent said.
Osman became a media hype during the army-backed interim regime in 2007 after his arrest by the joint forces May 29, 2007.
The joint forces seized Tk 1 crore in cash stashed inside a rice container in the kitchen, pillows and mattresses and in other unusual places in the house. They also seized two passports of the former forest
chief.
A special court on June 5, 2008 sentenced Osman to 12 years’ rigorous imprisonment for amassing wealth illegally and concealing information in his wealth statement submitted to the Anti-Corruption Commission.
The court also sentenced Osman’s fugitive wife Mohsenara Gani to three years in prison for aiding and abetting her husband in accumulating and protecting illegal wealth.
One of the investigators said that Mohsenara had left the country with a son and a daughter after the arrest of her husband.
The investigators said that several drives had been conducted on Osman’s house at Uttara and his parental house in Comilla to arrest Mohsenara.
The Anti-Corruption Commission’s deputy director Golam Shahriar Chowdhury filed the case with the Uttara police on July 26, 2007 accusing Osman and his wife of concealing wealth worth around Tk 4.3 crore.
In the wealth statement submitted to the commission, the couple showed assets worth Tk 3,70 crore. But the commission later found more assets worth about Tk 4.30 crore.
-With New Age input
