AL MP Badi jailed on graft charge [ Tritiyo Matra News ]

AL MP Badi jailed on graft charge

Local November 03, 2016

Ruling Awami League lawmaker Abdur Rahman Badi was sent to jail after a special judge court in Dhaka on Wednesday sentenced him to three years’ imprisonment for hiding information in his wealth statement submitted to Anti-Corruption Commission.
He was also fined Tk 10 lakh or, in default, three months more in jail, in a case filed by the corruption watchdog in 2014.
He was kept at the newly built Dhaka Central Jail at Keraniganj in Dhaka.
Judge Abu Ahmed Jamadar of Dhaka Special Judge Court -3 handed down the verdict.
Badi, lawmaker for Cox’s Bazar-4 parliamentary constituency, was in the dock while the verdict was pronounced.
The ACC had submitted charge sheet against Badi for amassing wealth illegally and submitting false wealth statement concealing information.
The court awarded the punishment only for concealing the wealth information as the charge was proved against him beyond any reasonable doubt.
It, however, acquitted him from the charge of earning wealth illegally as the charge was not proved beyond doubt.
The verdict said the court found that Badi, in his income tax return for 2013-14 tax year, had shown his wealth amounting to Tk 9.19 crore but in his wealth statement submitted to the ACC on March 20, 2014, he showed his wealth to be worth Tk 5.35 crore.
‘As a result, he submitted false wealth statement in this regard, concealing information of his wealth worth Tk 3.84 crore,’ the judgement said.
It said that Badi, in his wealth statement submitted to the Election Commission the same financial year on December 2, 2013, had shown his wealth to be worth Tk 10.99 crore.
If this amount is taken into consideration, the judgement says, he concealed information of Tk 5.63 crore while submitting his wealth statement to the ACC.
The court found that Badi committed crimes under the ACC Act by willingly concealing information of his wealth with an ill motive.
Emerging from the court, Badi’s lawyer Nasreen Siddiqua Lina told reporters that her client did not get justice and they would appeal to the higher court challenging the verdict.
She observed that her client was a political person and an elected lawmaker and that his political rivals in collusion with the ACC officials had lodged the case against him and submitted the charge sheet.
‘He is a big businessman and the amount of his wealth may increase or decrease from time to time. It is a relative matter and that is why the wealth statements submitted on three different dates to three different organisations may be different from one another,’ she claimed.
ACC lawyer Mosharrof Hossain Kajal, however, said that there was no collusion of his political rivals with the ACC officials in lodging the case.
On August 21, 2014, ACC’s deputy director Mohammad Abdus Sobhan filed the case with Ramna police station.
On May 7, 2015, the commission’s deputy director, Manjil Morshed, also the investigation officer of the case, submitted charge sheet against Badi.
At the trial stage, the court examined statements of 13 witnesses of the state.
Badi was arrested and put in jail for three weeks in October 2014. He later secured bail from the High Court and was released.
The MP, honoured for being the highest taxpayer of Cox’s Bazar in 2014, was also named in a Department of Narcotics Control list of suspected yaba trade ringleaders, according to sources in law enforcement agencies.
Meanwhile, several hundred of supporters of the lawmaker blocked the Cox’s Bazar-Teknaf road at several points at Ukhia for about an hour since 2:30pm, protesting at the verdict, Ukhia police officer-in-charge Md Abul Khayer told New Age.