Moudud has to leave Gulshan land

The Supreme Court yesterday dismissed three petitions filed seeking review of its verdict scrapping a High Court judgment that ordered the authorities to mutate the Gulshan land and residence, where senior BNP leader Moudud Ahmed has been living for more than three decades.

Moudud's brother Manzur Ahmed filed the petitions which the apex court dismissed yesterday with observations. The observations will be known when the SC releases its full text. 

The SC order means that Moudud must leave the residence, where he has been living using the name of his brother, Manzur Ahmed, said Attorney General Mahbubey Alam and Anti-Corruption Commission's lawyer Advocate Khurshid Alam Khan.

They told The Daily Star that Manzur Ahmed had obtained a judgment and decree from the trial court for keeping possession of the land through submitting forged documents.

Meanwhile, Barrister Moudud Ahmed told reporters that he would not leave the residence because the government was not given the ownership of the property.

He also said he would take shelter of the law and continue the legal fight with the original owner of the property.   

Yesterday, a five-member bench of the Appellate Division of the SC, headed by Chief Justice Surendra Kumar Sinha, passed the dismissal order after hearing the petitions.

The SC bench also dismissed another petition filed by ACC seeking review of its verdict that quashed the proceedings of a corruption case against Moudud and his brother Manzur on the charge of grabbing the land of the residence.

On August 2 last year, the SC scrapped the HC verdict that had directed the authorities concerned to mutate the Gulshan land where Moudud has been living.

The apex court, however, quashed the proceedings of the corruption case filed against Moudud and his brother Manzur.

The ACC on December 17, 2013 lodged the case with Gulshan Police Station against Moudud and his brother Monzur on the charge of grabbing the "abandoned public land", worth over Tk 300 crore, in the capital's Gulshan.

According to the case statement, Moudud and his brother grabbed the land of around one bigha and 13 kathas between 1978 and 2006.

The land was enlisted as the government's abandoned land in 1972 after Pakistani couple Mohammad Ehsan and Inge Maria Flatz left the country before 1972.

Ehsan received the possession of the land in 1961 from now-defunct DIT [now Rajuk]. The land was transferred to Flatz in 1965.

Moudud falsely showed that Flatz issued a power of attorney in favour of him on August 2, 1973.

Moudud grabbed the land and its establishment, and started living there showing him as a tenant of Flatz. But the ACC investigation found no record that says she visited Bangladesh after the independence of the country.