The Anti-Corruption Commission (ACC) on Sunday filed a case against 61 people, including 15 officials of Bangladesh Water Development Board (BWDB), for their alleged involvement in irregularities in implementing haor embankment projects.
ACC assistant director Md Faruk Ahmed filed the case against them with Sunamganj Police Station, ACC spokesman Pranab Kumar Bhattacharya told UNB.
The 15 BWDB officials sued by the ACC are: former executive engineer (Sunamganj) Afsar Uddin, former superintending engineer (Sylhet) Nurul Islam Sarkar, former additional chief engineer (northwest zone) Md Abdul Hye, deputy divisional engineers (Sunamganj) Deepak Ranjan Das and Khalilur Rahman, and section officers (Sunamganj) Md Shahidullah, Ibrahim Khalilullah Khan, Khandaker Ali Reaz, Md Rafiqul Islam, Shah Alam, Barkat Ullah Bhuiyan, Mahmudul Karim, Md Mosaddek, Sajib Paul and Md Jahangir Hossain.
The proprietors or representatives of 46 local construction firms involved in repairing or constructing embankments in haors are also accused in the case.
According to the first information report (FIR), the BWBD officials in collusion with each other gave clearance to the contractors violating the basic contract rules to continue the unfinished works of 84 packages of fiscal 2015-16 without calling new tenders in fiscal 2016-17.
The contractors did not start works on nine packages out of 160 and completed partial works of the remaining 151 packages, paving the way to plunder money from the future haor projects and thus caused huge losses to famers. The FIR said the BWDB took a 6.5-km embankment project in 2011 to prevent flashflood in Sunamganj. The project was supposed to be completed in 2015, but it is extended upto June 2019 due to delay in launching the project. The case was filed under the Prevention of Corruption Act 1947 and Penal Code 1960.
Later in the day, an ACC team, led by its director Belal Hossain, arrested two accused of the case-former BWDB executive engineer Afsar Uddin and proprietor of Ibrahim Traders Md Bachhu Miah-from the city’s Motijheel area.
