The High Court on Sunday handed over four trustee members of North South University to the Shahbagh police after denying their anticipatory bail prayer in a case filed over the misappropriation of fund.
Allegation had it that the university trust showed that it had paid Tk 500 crore to Ashaloy Housing and Developers Ltd for purchasing a 250-acre land which was actually bought at Tk 200 crore in 2016.
The trustees later embezzled the additional amount of Tk 300 crore in connivance with the housing company, according the case filed by the Anti-Corruption Commission.
The NSU trustee members who were arrested by the police from the courtroom are Benajir Ahmed, also a former president of Dhaka Chamber of Commerce and Industry, MA Kashem, former president of Federation of Bangladesh Chambers of Commerce and Industry, Mohammed Shajahan, managing director of Shah Fatehullah Textile Mills Ltd and Jalal Ahmed Spinning Mills Ltd, and Rehana Rahman, managing director of Bengal Tradeways Ltd.
A bench of Justice Md Nazrul Islam Talukder and Justice Kazi Md Ejarul Haque Akondo directed the officer-in-charge of Shahbagh police station to arrest the four trustee members from the courtroom where they appeared seeking anticipatory bail considering their old age.
The court also asked the officer to produce the four accused before the Dhaka Metropolitan Senior Special Judge’s Court within 24-hour.
Shahbagh police station officer-in-charge Moudut Hawlader told New Age that the accused were kept in the lock-up of the police station at night and they would be produced before the court today (Monday).
The court observed that the bail prayers of the four were being rejected summarily considering the gravity of their alleged offences.
The Anti-Corruption Commission on May 5 filed a case against six individuals, including the four arrested trustee members, the board of trustee chairman Azim Uddin Ahmed and Ashaloy Housing and Developers Ltd managing director Amin Md Hilaly over embezzlement.
Attorney general AM Amin Uddin and ACC lawyer Khurshid Alam Khan vehemently opposed the bail prayer for the trustee members and prayed for sending them to jail from the HC.
The land was purchased from the Ashaloy Housing Ltd located inside the Bashundhara Housing Project at Rupganj in Narayanganj in the name of extension of NSU campus bypassing the approval of the university syndicate, the University Grants Commission and the ministry of education, according to the case document.
The trustees’ lawyers Hassan Ariff, Fida M Kamal and Mizan Sayeed prayed for their bail, arguing that the ACC cooked up the story of NSU fund embezzlement only to harass the four businessmen.
The lawyers also said that the anti-graft body had no authority to assess the tender value of the land under the registration act.
– With New Age input
