[🇧🇩] The fate of big guns/beneficiaries of Awami League after the student revolution

[Saif]

Former MP Abul Kalam Azad sued in attempted murder case

Ten people, including former Jamalpur-1 MP Abul Kalam Azad, have been sued in an attempted murder case. .District Chhatra Dal Vice President Md Shahadat Hossain filed the case with Jamalpur Sadar Police Station last night, said police. .Besides, 200 to 300 unnamed accused from Awami

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Former MP Abul Kalam Azad sued in attempted murder case

Abul Kalam Azad

Ten people, including former Jamalpur-1 MP Abul Kalam Azad, have been sued in an attempted murder case.

District Chhatra Dal Vice President Md Shahadat Hossain filed the case with Jamalpur Sadar Police Station last night, said police.

Besides, 200 to 300 unnamed accused from Awami League and its affiliated organisations were also accused in the case.

The accused include Abul Kalam Azad, former MP of Jamalpur Sadar ; Safiqul Islam, Group Captain (retd) of Bangladesh Air Force, Jamalpur District AL VP Farooq Ahmed Chowdhury, former Jamalpur municipality mayor Sanawar Hossain Sanu, General Secretary of District Jubo League Farhan Ahmed, and General Secretary of District Chhatra League Nafiul Karim Rabbi.

According to the case statement, during the students-led mass uprising on August 3, when the students were marching towards Bakultala from Mirza Azam intersection area of Jamalpur municipality in the afternoon, the leaders and activists of Awami League and its affiliated organisations attacked them with firearms, locally made weapons, and bamboo sticks.

Faisal Mohammad Atiq, officer-in-charge of Jamalpur Sadar Police Station, said several police teams are working to arrest the accused.​

 

[Bilal9]

Pressure piles on president to step down

The walls seemed to be closing in on President Mohammed Shahabuddin as calls for his resignation grew louder yesterday.

www.thedailystar.net

Pressure piles on president to step down
Students demonstrate in front of Bangabhaban, Central Shaheed Minar, elsewhere in the country

View attachment 9962

The walls seemed to be closing in on President Mohammed Shahabuddin as calls for his resignation grew louder yesterday.

As more and more people joined demonstrations for his resignation, the government yesterday called him out on his "lies" about Sheikh Hasina's resignation as prime minister.

It all began after Manab Zamin on Sunday published an exclusive interview of him saying that he only heard that Hasina had resigned, but there was no evidence of her resignation.

As several hundred protesters under the banners Raktim July 2024 and Shadhinota-Sharbobhoumotto Rokkha Committee attempted to break through the security barriers in front of the Bangabhaban around 8:30 o' clock last night, police detonated stun grenades.

The protesters then chased the police away.

Five people, including two journalists, suffered minor injuries, witnesses said. Police also hit the protesters with batons and used tear gas shells.

Army personnel were seen trying to calm the situation.

At around 11:30pm, Hasnat Abdullah and Sarjis Alam, two of the most influential organisers of the student movement against discrimination, arrived and requested the protesters to leave, promising that a change would come in two days.

By midnight, most of the protesters left.

Hasnat told the protesters that he would talk to political parties in the presence of the army chief, and by Thursday, choose someone who could be the president.

Sarjis said, "We will discuss and appoint a person to an important post like that of the president. If emotion wins over strategy, we as well as the country will get hurt in the long run."

Unless a rational decision is made by Thursday, "we will join you on the streets".

On Sunday, Manab Zamin's political magazine Janatar Chokh ran an interview of President Shahabuddin with its Chief Editor Matiur Rahman Chowdhury.

"I tried [to collect the resignation letter] many times but failed. Maybe she did not have the time," Shahabuddin said.

The following day, Law Adviser Asif Nazrul termed the president's remark a lie and that the president's comments were akin to misconduct and if he stuck to his guns, the government should reconsider his position.

According to section 57(a) of the constitution, the prime minister's office shall become vacant if he/she resigns from the office at any time by handing the resignation letter to the president.

Yesterday, Chief Adviser's Deputy Press Secretary Apurba Jahangir told a press briefing at the Foreign Service Academy that the interim government agreed with Asif's statement.

He, however, stated that the government was yet to make any move to remove Shahabuddin.

Earlier in the day, student leaders demonstrated at the Central Shaheed Minar. They threatened to take to the streets if the government failed to meet their demands within this week.

They said the president lost his moral authority to stay in office.

In another development, Law Adviser Asif Nazrul and Information Adviser Nahid Islam held a half-hour long meeting with Chief Justice Syed Refaat Ahmed at the latter's Supreme Court office around 2:00pm, said Aziz Ahmed Bhuiyan, SC registrar general.

He did not say what was discussed at the meeting.

As per section 106 of the constitution, if at any time it appears to the president that a question of law has arisen, or is likely to arise, which is of such a nature and of such public importance that it is expedient to obtain the opinion of the Supreme Court upon it, he may refer the question to the Appellate Division for consideration and the division may, after such hearing as it thinks fit, report its opinion thereon to the President.

PROTESTS IN DHAKA AND OUTSIDE

In the capital, demonstrations in front of the Bangabhaban started in the afternoon and the Gulistan road was blocked in the evening.

Protesters under the banner Shadhinota-Sharbobhoumotto Rokkha Committee marched from Dhaka University campus towards the Bangabhaban, reports UNB.

Police stopped them at the High Court Mazar intersection, but they managed to march to the Bangabhaban. They attempted to stage a sit-in inside the Bangabhaban, but the members of law enforcement agencies barred them.

The demonstrators then held a rally outside.

Another group, Raktim July 24, organised a separate sit-in there, demanding the president's removal, the UNB reports.

There were demonstrations in other parts of Dhaka and in different other districts.

In the morning, a group of around 15 protesters gathered near the Bangabhaban, chanting slogans denouncing the president.

Saied Ahmed Sarker, one of the demonstrators, said they also demanded a ban on the Awami League and Chhatra League.

In Barishal, school, college, and university students held a rally at the Ashwini Kumar Hall, demanding the president's resignation and a ban on Chhatra League.

Rajshahi University students demonstrated on the campus.

Similar protests were held in Jhenidah, where students took to the streets around 4:30pm.​

Why couldn't this president keep his incoherent thoughts to himself and preserve his izzat/honor for a few months?

This is not very hard to do.

Now they will have to deport his tush over to Australia, where he can live out the rest of his days as an insignificant nobody. Truly foolish.

 

[Bilal9]

Govt should bust nexus of tycoons close to Hasina

POWERFUL business tycoons, who had been close to the deposed prime minister Sheikh Hasina, have swindled $17 billion off the banking sector, as the Bangladesh Bank government has said in an interview with the Financial Times, during the 15 years of the authoritarian regime of the Awami League...

www.newagebd.net

Govt should bust nexus of tycoons close to Hasina
30 October, 2024, 00:00

POWERFUL business tycoons, who had been close to the deposed prime minister Sheikh Hasina, have swindled $17 billion off the banking sector, as the Bangladesh Bank government has said in an interview with the Financial Times, during the 15 years of the authoritarian regime of the Awami League. The central banker is reported to have said that the tycoons worked with the military intelligence agency in this. He has also alleged in the interview that the agency facilitated the takeover of major banks which led to the systematic transfer of the money out of Bangladesh. This is said to be the biggest robbing of banks by any international standards that would not be possible without intelligence officials pressuring the chiefs of the banks into compliance. The money was swindled out in loans given out to new shareholders and inflated import invoices while the government during the 15 years pursued a development model frenziedly obsessed with growth in gross domestic product and per capita income that have hardly benefitted people at large. What is further disparaging is that the S Alam Group alone is involved in the laundering of at least $10 billion. All this is but a fraction of the whole illicit capital flow.

The central bank governor has said that intelligence officials forced members on bank boards to sell their shares at gunpoint to the S Alam Group chief, with one bank after another facing coercive takeover. All this cannot have happened without the involvement of ranking government leaders. Most of the activities of the group was suspicious and questionable. Yet, nothing could then be done to stop such happenings. This suggests the intensity of the influence that the S Alam Group enjoyed on the government. And, all such incidents left the economy high and dry. The interim government, installed on August 8 after the deposed prime minister had fled to India on August 5, has the repatriation of the money thus laundered high on its agenda. The government has now sought international assistance to investigate overseas assets of Sheikh Hasina’s associates. It has, therefore, become imperative that the government should go all out to repatriate the money that has been laundered in all such cases and hold to justice all the offenders. The government should also hold to justice all the people and quarters involved in the offences. The government should arrest chiefs of all the banks and the people and quarters concerned in the Bangladesh Bank, which is the regulator of the banking sector, and interrogate them to get a clear picture of how the offences have happened for an insight into ways to stop their recurrence and bring to justice others who were also involved.

The interim government should, therefore, recover the stolen funds that have left dozens of bank mostly bankrupt and the economy dry. It should also hold to justice people in the nexus, still at large on both the private and the public side, to stop the recurrence of such scams.​

This is very important as these tycoons and bank-loan defaulters (S. Alam, Summit Group) will be the ones financing her "attempted" return to power. Whether that "attempt" is successful or not. I think the Govt. should end all involvement with these Hasina supporter entities and also large "known" foreign conglomerates such as Adani/Ambani etc.

 

[Saif]

Shomi Kaiser arrested in Uttara

The Dhaka Metropolitan Police (DMP) arrested actress Shomi Kaiser in the capital’s Uttara area early today.

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Shomi Kaiser arrested in Uttara

The Dhaka Metropolitan Police (DMP) arrested actress Shomi Kaiser in the capital's Uttara area early today.

She was arrested around 12:30am during a drive, said Rawnak Jahan, deputy commissioner of the Uttara Division Police, told The Daily Star. The drive was conducted on a tip-off and the arrest was made at a house on Road-6 of sector-4, Rawnak added.

On October 9, former prime minister Sheikh Hasina, Shomi Kaiser, folk singer and former lawmaker Momtaz Begum, former minister and actress Tarana Halim, and 13 others were sued for attempting to kill BNP activist -- Syed Hasan Mahmud -- in June 2022.

Mahmud filed the case against Hasina and others with the court of Dhaka Metropolitan Magistrate Belal Hossain.

Rawnak said, "Actress Shomi Kaiser is an FIR listed accused. She will be shown arrested in the case."

Till the filling of this report around 1:00am, police were conducting the drive in the capital's Uttara.

Shomi is the daughter of Bangladeshi novelist, writer and martyred intellectual Shahidullah Kaiser and writer and former parliamentarian Panna Kaiser.​

 

[Saif]

CID launches probe against former law minister's aide

Criminal Investigation Department (CID) has launched an investigation into the alleged money laundering by Toufika Karim, a close associate of former Law Minister Anisul Huq

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CID launches probe against former law minister's aide

File photo: Collected

Criminal Investigation Department (CID) has launched an investigation into the alleged money laundering by Toufika Karim, a close associate of former Law Minister Anisul Huq.

"The CID has started investigating allegations against Toufika Karim, widely recognised as the former minister's 'personal cashier', based on various sources and complaints," said Azad Rahman, special superintendent of police (media) at the CID headquarters.

Through her work in the legal profession, she reportedly became close to Anisul Huq and, allegedly with his support, is accused of establishing a network of illegal syndicates and embezzlement schemes, said a CID press release.

Since 2014, Toufika Karim is alleged to have engaged in activities like file tampering, forgery, job placement without exams, and influencing court verdicts, reportedly collecting large sums of money from defendants in high-profile cases in exchange for securing their bail or altering verdicts, said the CID release.

In 2020, further allegations surfaced that Toufika Karim, through irregular practices in the Dhaka Sessions Judge and Chief Metropolitan Magistrate courts, facilitated the appointment of 18 drivers from the former minister's constituency of Akhaura-Kasba.

Additionally, she held positions as the chairman of Citizen Charter Bank and managing director of Desh TV, reportedly owned by Anisul Huq. Sources allege that with the former minister's illicit wealth, she acquired several overseas properties in Canada, Dubai, and Malaysia as "second homes," according to the CID.

"It is rumoured that Toufika fled the country for Canada on July 26, just days before the Awami League government was ousted from power on August 5," the CID said.

Since money laundering is classified as a predicate offence under the Anti-Money Laundering Act, the CID's Financial Crimes Unit has begun investigating Toufika Karim and associated parties in this regard, said the release.​

 

[Saif]

Amu arrested in the capital

The Detective Branch of police yesterday arrested former industries minister and Awami League advisory council member Amir Hossain Amu in the capital.

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Amu arrested in the capital
He faces 15 cases over murder, other offences

The Detective Branch of police yesterday arrested former industries minister and Awami League advisory council member Amir Hossain Amu in the capital.

He was held from a house in the West Dhanmondi area around 1:30pm, said Talebur Rahman, deputy commissioner (media) of Dhaka Metropolitan Police.

Police said Amu stands accused in at least 15 cases on various charges, including murder.

Amu, also the coordinator of the AL-led 14-party alliance, was elected member of parliament six times from Jhalokathi-2 constituency.

Like many other AL leaders, Amu had been in hiding since the fall of the Sheikh Hasina-led government on August 5.

The next day, a joint team of army and police recovered Tk 5 crore in local and foreign currencies from Amu's house in Jhalokathi after a mob set the house on fire.

The money was discovered when firefighters went there to extinguish the blaze. They informed the army and police, who then arrived at the scene and found several pieces of luggage stashed with money.

On August 17, the Bangladesh Financial Intelligence Unit instructed all banks to freeze accounts of Amu and his daughter Sumaiya Hossain.

It also asked the banks to block all transactions through the accounts they maintain.​

 

[Saif]

AL MP Dhirendra Shambhu arrested in Uttara

Former Awami League MP of Barguna-1 Dhirendra Debnath Shambhu was arrested by the Detective Branch (DB) of police in the capital's Uttara tonight

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AL MP Dhirendra Shambhu arrested in Uttara

Dhirendra Debnath Shambhu

Former Awami League MP of Barguna-1 Dhirendra Debnath Shambhu was arrested by the Detective Branch (DB) of police in the capital's Uttara tonight.

Mohammad Talebur Rahman, deputy commissioner (media and public relations) of the Dhaka Metropolitan Police, confirmed this to The Daily Star.

There are multiple cases filed against Shambhu over attacks on protesters during the July-August student-led mass uprising.

The DB official could not specify under which case Shambhu was shown arrested.​

 

[Saif]

Ex-SCBA secy Momtaz, ex-DNCC mayor Atiqul remanded

A metropolitan magistrate court in Dhaka on Wednesday allowed the police to take Supreme Court Bar Association’s former secretary Momtaz Uddin Ahmed Mehedi and Dhaka North City Corporation’s former mayor Atiqul Islam in custody for interrogation in separate murder cases...

www.newagebd.net

Ex-SCBA secy Momtaz, ex-DNCC mayor Atiqul remanded
Staff Correspondent 14 November, 2024, 00:39

A metropolitan magistrate court in Dhaka on Wednesday allowed the police to take Supreme Court Bar Association’s former secretary Momtaz Uddin Ahmed Mehedi and Dhaka North City Corporation’s former mayor Atiqul Islam in custody for interrogation in separate murder cases.

Besides, the same court on Wednesday placed former agriculture minister Md Abdus Shahid on three-day fresh remand in a case lodged with the Uttara West police station under the Foreign Exchange Regulation Act 1947.

The court of Dhaka metropolitan magistrate Farzana Shakila Sumu Chowdhury placed former SCBA secretary Momtaz on three-day remand in a case lodged over the murder of bus driver Alamgir Hossain during the student-led mass uprising.

The court passed the order as police produced him before the court and pleaded to place him on seven-day remand in the case.

Mehedi was arrested at his Uttara Sector 9 house on November 10.

Alamgir Hossain, 34, a driver of Raida Paribahan, was gunned down in Uttara’s Azampur area on August 5 during the student-led mass uprising that eventually ousted prime minister Sheikh Hasina.

Victim’s mother Aleya Begum filed the case on October 6, against 288 people including Hasina.

The same court placed former DNCC mayor Atiqul on five-day remand in a case lodged over the murder of one Bokul Miah with the Uttara East police station on July 18.

The police arrested Atiqul in the capital’s Mohakhali DOHS area on October 16. The court sent him to jail the next day, showing him arrested in three separate murder cases.

Bokul Miah was shot at in his head and succumbed to his injuries the next day.

Later, his wife Monika Akter filed the case with the police station.

The same court on Wednesday placed former minister Abdus Shahid on three-day fresh remand in a case lodged with the Uttara West police station under the Foreign Exchange Regulation Act 1947.

The case was filed under section 23 (1) of the Foreign Exchange Regulation Act 1947.

Dhaka metropolitan magistrate Farzana Shakila Sumu Chowdhury passed the order as police produced him before the court and pleaded to place him on seven-day remand.

On October 30, the court placed him on four-day remand in a case lodged over bus driver Alamgir Hossain’s murder.

The former minister was arrested at his residence at Uttara in the early hours of October 30, where Tk 3.20 crore, $1,953, and other currencies were recovered from the house.​

 

[Saif]

Ex-MP Ali Azam Mukul arrested in Dhaka

Rapid Action Battalion (RAB) on Wednesday night arrested former lawmaker from Bhola-2 constituency Ali Azam Mukul from capital’s Hazaribagh area. A short message from the battalion confirmed the arrest, reports BSS. Mukul was wanted in a number of criminal cases including murder and attack

thefinancialexpress.com.bd

Ex-MP Ali Azam Mukul arrested in Dhaka
FE ONLINE DESK
Published :
Nov 14, 2024 00:00
Updated :
Nov 14, 2024 00:00

Rapid Action Battalion (RAB) on Wednesday night arrested former lawmaker from Bhola-2 constituency Ali Azam Mukul from capital’s Hazaribagh area.

A short message from the battalion confirmed the arrest, reports BSS.

Mukul was wanted in a number of criminal cases including murder and attack on the recent Anti-Discrimination Student Movement.

He would be produced before the court on Thursday.​

 

[Saif]

Freeze accounts of NRBC Bank chairman

Banks have been asked to freeze all personal and private company accounts of three top former and current officials of NRBC Bank

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Freeze accounts of NRBC Bank chairman
BFIU asks banks

Banks have been asked to freeze all personal and private company accounts of three top former and current officials of NRBC Bank

They are Parvez Tamal, chairman; Mohammad Adnan Imam, former executive committee chairman; and Md Jafar Iqbal Howlader, vice president of the financial administration division.

Yesterday, the Bangladesh Financial Intelligence Unit (BFIU) through a letter ordered banks to keep their personal and private company accounts frozen for 30 days in the first phase.

The intelligence unit also sought an update on the details of their personal and company accounts within five working days.

There are several allegations of corruption related to money laundering and recruitment business against a number of board members of the bank, including Tamal and some top management officials.

A central bank report found that the bank outsourced various services at higher rates from the companies of the board members of NRBC and provided them with loans, violating banking rules.

Despite being the chairman, Tamal behaved like the managing director of the bank and made the one responsible for the post a puppet, industry insiders said.

NRBC official sources said Tamal did not go to the bank's head office regularly in the last two months, which he used to do before the fall of the Awami League government on August 5 this year.​