The High Court on Wednesday issued a rule asking the concerned authorities why a full probe into allegations of corruption against the former 17 CBA leaders of Biman Bangladesh Airlines should not be ordered.
The concerned bodies, including the Anti-Corruption Commission (ACC), have been asked to respond to the rule within four weeks.
The bench of Justice Nazrul Islam Talukder and Justice SM Mojibur Rahman issued the rule in response to a supplementary petition filed by rights group Human Rights and Peace for Bangladesh (HRPB).
Advocate Manzil Morshed, who was present in the court on behalf of HRPB said that in January 2014, the ACC issued a notice against the then 17 CBA leaders of Biman for investigating corruption.
The 17 CBA leaders include Md Mosikur Rahman, Azhaul Imam Majumder, Anwar Hossain, Md Yunus Khan, Md Montasar Rahman, Md Rubel Chowdhury, Md Rafiqul Alam, Md Atiqur Rahman, Md Harun Or Rashid, Abdul Bari, Md Firozul Islam, Md Abdus Sobhan, Golam Kaiser Ahmed, Md Abdul Zabbar and Md Abdul Aziz.
These leaders refused to appear before the ACC during the time.
A writ petition was filed in the High Court on behalf of Human Rights and Peace for Bangladesh attaching media reports that no further action has been taken by the ACC over the matter.
The High Court ruled on February 3 in 2014 on the preliminary hearing of the writ petition.
The rule asked why the inaction of the ACC in taking action would not be declared illegal.
At the same time, they were instructed to investigate allegations of corruption.
Later, the ACC submitted an investigation report to the High Court stating that there was no evidence of corruption in the investigation against them.
However, the report was submitted only along with the assets and tax files provided by the CBA leaders.
In order to investigate allegations of corruption against someone, information from banks, insurance and sub-registry offices is taken to ascertain whether a person has land and assets. But that was not the case with these CBA leaders.
Therefore, a supplementary application was filed by HRPB seeking directions for a full investigation into the 17 CBA leaders.
Source: United News of Bangladesh