Staff Reporter :
The High Court (HC) on Sunday, in an observation, said that the Anti-Corruption Commission (ACC) is an independent organisation and if it works independently, the country’s growth will be steady.But if the ACC fails to do so, everyone will have to be on the streets to beg, the High Court also said.
The HC bench of Justice F R M Nazmul Ahasan and Justice K M Kamrul Kader made the observations while recording the statement of ACC officials on the issue of wrong person being in jail for three years.
Advocate Khurshid Alam Khan was representing ACC in the hearing and Advocate Amit Das Gupta appeared for Jahlam, a Jute Mills worker, has been in jail custody for the last three
years in place of the original accused in 33 cases filed on charge of misappropriation of Tk 18 crore of the Sonali Bank.
In the hearing, Advocate Khurshid Alam Khan told the court that it was the government lawyers’ mistake to file the cases against Jahalam.
The ACC officials said in the court, “We filed FIR against Abu Salek after getting information from the Sonali Bank and the Bangladesh Bank. Abdullah Abu Zahid investigated the case on April 20, 2012. Then the name of Jahlam came into the charge sheet and the local Chairman of Tangail also identified Jahlam.”
Then the court observed, “Anti-Corruption Commission is an independent organisation and if it works independently, the country’s growth will be steady. But if the ACC fails to do so, everyone will have to be on the streets to beg.”
The High Court yesterday directed the jail authorities to release Jahlam who was in jail for the last three years instead of the real accused in 33 corruption cases.
The court passed the order after the Director General of the Anti-Corruption Commission, plaintiff of the cases and two other government officials appeared before it.
Between 2010 and 2011, Abu Salek, a businessman, misappropriated about Tk 18 crore from Sonali Bank’s Cantonment Branch. Salek used a fake address to open an account with the bank, the ACC said.
Salek also had an account in another private bank, ACC sources said. In 2012, the anti-graft watchdog filed the 33 cases for the misappropriation, and Salek was made accused in most of them. During investigation, the commission asked the banks’ officials to identify and trace Salek.
The officials informed the ACC that the address provided by Salek in his bank documents was in Tangail’s Nagarpur, Jahlam’s village address, ACC sources said.
The commission then summoned Jahlam in its office where the bank officials, including the account’s introducers, were present.
Jahlam, a worker of Bangladesh Jute Mills at Ghorashal in Narshingdi, went to ACC and claimed that he was not Abu Salek and he did not have any account in the Sonali Bank and the picture which was used to open the account was not his picture.
But the bank officers, who were present in the ACC that day, identified Jahlam as Abu Salek. The ACC arrested Jahlam from Ghorashal in the month of February of 2016. Later in the court, Jahlam described the issue of identity confusing and claimed himself innocent. But no one listened to him. So, he has been serving time in jail in place of Abu Salek and appearing in the court regularly.
Jahlam will fulfill three years of his confinement on February 6, 2019. But now ACC is saying that Jahlam is innocent. After an investigation the Human Rights Commission of Bangladesh gave the same opinion.
