Staff Reporter :
The High Court on Wednesday refused to grant anticipatory bail to Bashundhara Groups’ Managing Director Sayem Sobhan Anvir in the case filed against him and some others on charge of killing after raping college student Mosarat Jahan Munia.
The Bench of Justice Mustafa Zaman Islam and Justice KM Zahid Sarwar deleted Anvir’s name from the bail petition, as there was specific allegations against him.
However, the High Court granted anticipatory bail to Anvir’s wife Sabrina Sayem for six weeks in the case. She has been asked to surrender in the trial court concerned on expiry of her bail period in the case.
In the order the court said, “The court will not intervene in the case of the first petitioner (Anvir) for the time being as there is specific allegation against him and ‘signs of injury’ were found in Munia’s autopsy report. That is why we are deleting his name from the petition.”
Lawyers Yusuf Hossain Humayun and Hassan Imam appeared in the hearing on behalf of Bashundhara Groups’ managing director and his wife, while Assistant Attorney General Mizanur Rahman Bhuiyan represented the State.
Sayem Sobhan Anvir and his wife Sabrina Sayem filed the bail petition with the High Court last week seeking anticipatory bail in the case filed against them on charge of killing after raping college student Mosarat Jahan Munia.
The Gulshan police on April 26 recovered the body of Mosarat hanging from a ceiling fan in a rented flat at Gulshan in Dhaka.
On September 6, Mosarat’s sister Nusrat Jahan filed a complaint with the Dhaka Women and Children Repression Prevention Tribunal-8 against Bashundhara Group Managing Director Sayem Sobhan Anvir, his wife Sabrina Sayem and six others.
The six other accused are- chairman of the group Ahmed Akbar Sobhan alias Shah Alam and his wife Afroza Begum, model Faria Mahbub Piyasha, Saifa Rahman Mim, the Gulshan flat’s landlord Ibrahim Ahmed Ripon and his wife Sharmin.
After hearing, the judge of the tribunal Mafroza Parveen directed the Officer-in-Charge of the Gulshan Police Station to treat the complaint as first information report and to send the case to the chief of Police Bureau of Investigation for taking step to probe into the complaint.
Nusrat in the case statement named Sayem as the prime accused of raping and murdering the victim. She accused the other seven people of intimidating Mosarat and assisting Sayem to commit the crime of ‘rape and murder’ of the college student.
Nusrat in the case statement alleged that Sayem took Mosarat in a house at Banani in Dhaka in June 2019 and raped her there for seven to eight months.
The family of Sayem later brought Mosarat in their house with the help of Piyasha and asked Mosarat to leave Dhaka, said the case statement.
In 2020, Sayem sent Mosarat to her home in Cumilla with the promise of marriage and on March 1, 2021, he brought her to Dhaka and rented a flat for her at Gulshan at Tk 1,30,000 a month with the promise of marriage, according to the statement.
Citing a medical report, the complainant said that Mosarat later became pregnant.
Earlier on April 26, Nusrat filed another case against Bashundhara MD Sayem on charges of abetting the ‘suicide’ of the college student. Later the police submitted final report with recommendation for clearing Sayem and others of the charges.
Nusrat later filed a fresh complaint against Sayem and the seven people with the Women and Children Repression Prevention Tribunal after the magistrate rejected Nusrat’s petition objecting to the final report.
