A Jessore court yesterday sentenced eight people including the Narail Zila Parishad chairman and former municipality mayor to seven years' rigorous imprisonment for irregularities in a cattle market lease.

Judge Nitai Chandra Saha of the Special Judges Court also fined the convicts Tk 1.96 lakh in a case filed by the Anti-Corruption Commission in August 2008 over misappropriation of the same amount. 

Incumbent Narail Zila Parishad Chairman Sohrab Hossain Biswas was mayor of the Narail Sadar municipality between 2004 and 2005. At the time, a tender was floated for lease of a cattle market in Narail district town, said Public Prosecutor Sirazul Islam, when one HM Sohel Rana Polash won the bid by offering Tk 65,555, the highest.

The winning bidder deposited Tk 33,000 as bank draft in compliance with the bidding rules but later refused to take the lease.

The then municipality commissioners Jahangir Biswas and five others and the then acting secretary of the municipality recommended that Sohel should be allowed to withdraw the money. The mayor, Sohrab accepted it. 

Later, without floating a re-tender, they showed the cattle market as Khas land and misappropriated Tk 1.96 lakh over three years.

Apart from Sohrab and Jahangir, Narail municipality mayor at present, the other accused are the then municipality commissioners -- Syed Mushfiqur Rahman Bacchu, Shariful Alam Litu, Ahmad Ali Khan, Rafiqul Islam and Telowat Hossain -- and the then acting secretary of the municipality, Matiar Rahman.

Matiar Rahman died during the trial proceedings. Sohrab has been on the run. The rest were sent to jail following the pronouncement of the judgment.