HC grants bail to Khandker Mosharraf

Senior BNP leader Khandker Mosharraf Hossain has been granted bail under special conditions by the High Court.

The bench of Md Rezaul Haque and Gobinda Chandra Tagore gave the order on Wednesday at the end of a hearing on a rule for bail in a case of money laundering.

The Court ordered the BNP Standing Committee member to surrender his passport and barred him from getting in touch with financial institutions related to the case filed by the Anti Corruption Commission (ACC).

File Photo

Attorney General Mahbubey Alam represented the state in the hearing while Md Khurshid Alam Khan was the ACC's counsel.

Moudud Ahmed argued for Khandker Mosharraf.

"Khandker Mosharraf was arrested only in this case. There's no other obstacle for his release. He will not leave the country without the court's permission, according to the order," Ahmed told reporters after the hearing.

On Feb 6, the anti-graft agency filed a case against Mosharraf under the Money Laundering Prevention Act.

He was accused of siphoning off Tk 95 million to the United Kingdom when he was the Health and Family Welfare Minister during the 2001-2006 tenure of the BNP government.

On March 12, a police team from Gulshan Police Station arrested the BNP leader from his Gulshan residence and handed him over to Ramna police.

He had secured an anticipatory bail from the HC, which the Appellate Division cancelled later.

The HC turned down his subsequent bail pleas. Later, an HC bench led by Justice Naima Haider issued a rule on the matter after reviewing his medical report.

Wednesday's order came after hearing on that rule ended.

A former teacher of the geology department at Dhaka University, Khandker Mosharraf Hossain has been a BNP Standing Committee member since 1994.

He has claimed that the amount mentioned in the case was neither earned through illegal means nor laundered.

During a hearing on Mar 13, he had told the court, “My wife and I earned the money between 1969 and 1973 while I was in London for higher education and had invested in the London stock exchange. The amount has over the years increased to US$ 95 million.”