The High Court has ordered the Anti-Corruption Commission to investigate allegations of forging bank document in bail plea of MP Salina Islam, wife of MP Shahid Islam alias Kazi Papul who has been jailed in Kuwait, and their daughter Wafa Islam.
The panel of Justice Md Nazrul Islam Talukder and Justice Mohi Uddin Shamim on Thursday ordered the ACC to finish the investigation within two months, reports bdnews24.com.
The court passed the orders after finding evidence of document forgery, said ACC counsel Khurshid Alam Khan.
Besides Salina, an MP from the seats reserved for women, and Wafa, the ACC will question Hafez Ahmed, who lobbied for Salina and Wafa’s bail, and others involved with the alleged forgery, Khurshid added.
Kuwaiti officials arrested Shahid, who ran recruiting business there, on human-trafficking and money-laundering charges. A court in the Middle-Eastern country sentenced him to four years in jail on Jan 28 this year.
The national graft busters on Nov 11 last year prosecuted Shahid, Salina, Wafa and Salina’s sister Jasmine Prodhan on charges of having Tk 23 million illegal wealth and laundering Tk 1.48 billion abroad.
Salina, Wafa and Jasmine filed a petition at the High Court seeking bail on Nov 26.
With the plea, they submitted a document, saying it was signed by Bangladesh Bank Deputy Director Md Arefin Ahsan and obtained from NRB Commercial Bank.
The document stated it did not appear that money laundering took place through a branch of NRB Commercial Bank.
After dismissing their bail plea ordering the trio to surrender on Dec 10, the High Court on Dec 22 ordered Bangladesh Bank’s Arefin to explain why his “self-contradictory” statement should not be declared illegal and beyond his legal authority.
The court also sought the NRB Commercial Bank’s statement on the document.
The bank on Jan 12 stated it did not issue the document, prompting the court to seek all relevant documents from the central bank.
Mohammad Shamim Aziz, the lawyer for the Bangladesh Bank, later submitted the papers and pointed out that the original document does not match the one submitted with the bail plea, which means it was false.