Dhaka, Sunday, July 5, 2009 - 9:50pm A Dhaka court today granted bail to former adviser to caretaker government Geeteara Safiya Choudhury and five others in a case filed on charge of forcibly occupying a property in Gulshan. Metropolitan Magistrate Munshi Abdul Majid granted bail to Geeteara and five others on a bond of Tk 50,000 each with two grantors.
Dhaka metropolitan magistrate Munshi Abdul Majid granted her and son Adcomm Ltd's Nazim Farhan Choudhury, Abu Rushd Tareq, Shamsunnahar Tareq, Sakhawat Hossain alias Shahadat and Ripon Chandra Saha bail at 2:45pm on a bond of Tk 50,000 each.
Geteeara's lawyer Romel Chowdhury had earlier submitted the petition to the court that set the hearing for 2pm. Her husband, former MP Nazim Kamran Choudhury, his younger brother Mukim Choudhury and the Choudhury couple's son-in-law Adit Bhagat secured bail in the same case on Friday on a bond of Tk 50,000 each. The three were arrested on Thursday night in the case. Police said at the time they were trying to trace Geeteara and the other accused.
House owners Dr Mahbubul Islam, a former professor at St. Francis University in Pennsylvania, US, and wife Farhana Islam, filed a case with Gulshan police charging 11 people with forcible occupation of their property, assault and death threats. Mahbubul told in the court on Sunday that the three defendants who had secured bail earlier had threatened to chase him out of the country.
Geeteara, surrounded by her ad agency Adcomm office colleagues, arrived in the court at noon with the other five accused. As the magistrate called their names one by one, the defendants in the dock raised their hands and registered their presence. Their lawyers said the other three accused in the case had got bail on Friday, as the case sections were bailable. The investigation officer, however, moved in the court on Sunday in a bid to add another non-bailable section to the case, they added.
The prosecution lawyers said the accused bailed out on Friday had been threatening the plaintiff in various ways. They added that the accused being influential people may create problems in the investigation if they were set free on bail. About the delay in filing the case, the counsels said the plaintiff had not dared lodge a complaint during the caretaker government's rule, but he had filed a complaint.
But the police had submitted final report at that time avoiding mentioning the offenders and relinquishing them all, they added. As the lawyers argued noisily, the court premises were filled with commotion. Geeteara kept standing in the dock all through putting a hand on her cheek. The Islams accused the principal tenant Nazim Kamran and the others of illegally occupying the property, at 7/A, Road No 41, Gulshan-2, since the expiry of a five-year rental agreement.
The prosecution lawyers told bdnews24.com that his clients had rented out the six-storied house, barring one-third of the fourth floor, in 2002 and the accused had set up offices of three firms, Adcomm, Signage and Megnavision. The agreement expired on Sept 30, 2007, but the defendants did not leave the house.
Lawyers for the defendants pleading for Nazim Kamran's bail on Friday told court that the Islams had illegally asked them to leave the house without renewing the rental agreement and that the accused had been paying the rent through the court. The defendants themselves filed 15 cases against the house owners in the past, who in turn had filed eight, the lawyers added.
Mahbubul Islam filed the current case last Thursday on behalf of wife Farhana, who owns the building. The case alleged that in July 2008, the accused forcibly brought a generator onto the premises ignoring the house owner's objections. The case also alleges that the accused had physically assaulted the house owner and made death threats against the Islam couple. Geeteara was the industries adviser to the past military-installed caretaker government and one of four advisers to have controversially quit the interim cabinet in early 2008.
