Moudud has to vacate Gulshan residence

Senior BNP leader Moudud Ahmed will have to vacate the Gulshan residence, where he is living using the name of his brother, as the Supreme Court yesterday scrapped a High Court verdict that had directed the authorities to mutate the house land in his brother's name.

The apex court, however, quashed the proceeding of a corruption case filed against Moudud and his brother Monzur Ahmed on the charge of grabbing the land of the residence.

Now, Rajuk can take steps to take possession of the land, Attorney General Mahbubey Alam told reporters after the SC ruling. “He is living there as a land grabber.”

Moudud, however, said that he will file a petition with the SC seeking review of its verdict.

A five-member bench of the appellate division headed by Chief Justice Surendra Kumar Sinha delivered the verdict yester

day after allowing the appeals of Rajuk and Moudud against two separate HC verdicts on them.

Rajuk had appealed to the Appellate Division of the SC against HC verdict that in August 2010 directed for mutating the land in the name of Moudud's bother Monzur.

Moudud had appealed to the apex court against another HC judgement that in June last year upheld a lower court's order accepting charges of the corruption case against them.

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

The ACC said in the case statement that Moudud and his brother grabbed the land -- stretching over around one bigha and 13 katha -- in Gulshan between 1978 and 2006.

According to the case statement, 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 case statement said, adding 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 that she visited Bangladesh after the independence of the country.

On September 14 last year, the Senior Special Judge's Court of Dhaka took cognisance of the charges in the case. But on June 23 last year, the HC rejected a revision petition filed by Moudud challenging the legality of the lower court order accepting the charges.