Another employee at the tribunal had assisted the cleaning staff, Nayan Ali, in the steal, DMP Detective Branch’s Joint Commissioner Monirul Islam told the press on Friday.
He said Nayan was arrested on Thursday for his involvement in ‘leaking’ the draft of verdict on Salauddin Quader’s war crimes trial before it was delivered by the tribunal.
Islam said, “During interrogation, Nayan said he took the bait of an assistant to Salauddin Quader Chowdhury’s lawyer. Another tribunal staff had helped him.”
But the police official would name the assistant and the tribunal staff for the sake of ongoing investigation.
He said Salauddin Quader’s lawyer Fakhrul Islam’s assistant had given Nayan a USB flash drive to collect the petition date from the tribunal’s computer and Nayan obliged. But parts of the composed draft verdict were transferred to the pen-drive by mistake.
Then Fakhrul’s assistant pressed Nayan for helping to get him the rest of the verdict. He also threatened to inform the tribunal authorities about Nayan having ‘leaked’ the verdict.
The assistant also provoked Nayan by promising him a lot of money if he had provided the rest of the draft verdict.
Then the other tribunal employee helped supply part of the verdict through the flash drive, Joint Commissioner Monirul Islam said quoting Nayan.
“And that’s how some parts of the verdict were out.”
Responding to a query, the DMP official said Nayan now and then used to compose letters and documents at the tribunal.
He said those who had collected parts of the draft verdict had committed two types of crimes – secretly collecting information regarding an issue pending trial and putting them in the public domain before by the court could pronounce the verdict.
Though police did not disclose the name of the two others. Naya Ali told reporters it was the lawyer’s assistant Mehedi Hasan who had made him supply parts of the draft verdict and he was helped by tribunal staff Faruk Mehedi.
BNP MP Salauddin Quader was sentenced to death on Tuesday by the first war crimes tribunal of Bangladesh for murder and genocide committed during the 1971 Liberation War.
His relatives, however, had claimed on the day of the judgment that they had found the war crime court’s verdict on various portalsdays before.
On the following day, tribunal Registrar Nasir Uddin Mahmud said the draft verdict had been ‘leaked’ from the tribunal's computer when it was being prepared. He had lodged a general diary with the Shahbagh police.
Police on Thursday seized the computer used for composing the draft verdict at the tribunal. They also questioned the some staff.
They raided the Kakrail office of Salauddin Quader’s lawyer on Friday and seized several stuffs including two computers.
The law enforcers have accused three persons in a case filed under Sections 54, 57 and 63 of the Information and Communication Technology Act over the ‘leak’.