UNB, Dhaka :The Appellate Division on Sunday fixed August 23 for hearing an appeal challenging the High Court order rejecting a petition filed by BNP leader Moudud Ahmed challenging the legality of a lower court order that had accepted charges against him in a case over grabbing a government house.Without passing an order, chamber judge of the Appellate Division Justice Hasan Foiz Siddique sent the case to the regular bench of the Appellate Division and fixed the date for the next hearing.Earlier, the High Court on June 23 rejected a review petition challenging the legality of a lower court order taking cognisance of the charges brought by the Anti Corruption Commission (ACC) against BNP senior leader Moudud Ahmed in the graft case.On December 17, 2013, the ACC filed the case against Moudud and his brother Manzur on charge of grabbing a government house worth about Tk 300 crore in the city’s Gulshan area. ACC deputy director Harun-or-Rashid submitted a chargesheet to the CMM court against the two brothers-Moudud and Manzur-on May 26 last year. On September 14, 2014, a court took cognisance of the chargesheet against them. According to the first information report (FIR), the Dhaka Improvement Trust, established in 1956 (now renamed as Rajuk), handed over a plot of one bigha and 14 katha in Gulshan residential area to Mohammad Ehsan on December 30, 1961. Later, the land was registered against his wife’s name, Inge Maria Flatz, an Austrian national, in 1965. Ehsan was a Pakistani national.As Ehsan and Flatz (both non-Bengalis) had left the country before the announcement of the list of government abandoned houses (the Ministry of Cabinet Affairs) on January 21, 1972, the plot was included in the list of abandoned houses.
