DHAKA: Appellate Division on Sunday stayed trial proceedings of illegal occupation case against BNP standing Committee member Moudud Ahmed till August 30.

The four-member appeal bench, led by chief justice SK Sinha, also asked him to file ‘leave to appeal’ by this time against HC order that declared the trial court’s cognisance of charges pressed against him as legal.

Barrister Moudud himself moved for the petition.

On June 23, the HC bench of Justice Moinul Islam Chowdhury and Justice JBM Hassan rejected Moudud’s petition and declared the lower court’s cognisance of the charges as legal.

Earlier, on December 17, 2013, the ACC filed the case against Moudud and his brother Manzur on charges of grabbing a government house worth about Tk 300 crore in the city’s Gulshan area.

On May 26, 2014, ACC Deputy Director Harun-or-Rashid submitted the charge sheet before a Dhaka court against the duo. On September 14, 2014, a court took cognisance of the charge sheet 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.

BDST: 1233 HRS, AUG 23, 2015
RS/SMS