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Published : 22 Jun 2026, 04:42 PM
A court in Chattogram has sentenced three former officials of the Bangladesh Telegraph and Telephone Board (BTTB) to 44 years in prison in a corruption case dating back nearly three decades.
The BTTB, the state-run telecom body, was later restructured and rebranded as Bangladesh Telecommunications Company Limited (BTCL).
Judge Md Mizanur Rahman of the Chattogram Divisional Special Tribunal delivers the verdict on Monday.
The accused were found guilty of embezzling Tk 16.6 million through fraudulent banking transactions carried out in collusion, Md Rezaul Karim Rony, public prosecutor for the Anti-Corruption Commission (ACC), said.
The court convicted them on six separate counts -- under five sections of the Penal Code and Section 5(2) of the Prevention of Corruption Act 1947.
Under two counts each they received 10 years, under two counts seven years, and under the remaining two counts five years, totalling 44 years per convict.
Each convict was also fined Tk 10 million, with a further three years and six months in jail in default of payment.
The sentences will run concurrently.
The convicts are Mohammad Hossain, former upper-division assistant-cum-cashier at the divisional engineer's (building construction) office of the BTTB Agrabad branch in Chattogram, and former divisional engineers Md Kamrul Alam and Sadikur Rahman Khan.
All three are fugitives and arrest warrants have been issued against them, the ACC prosecutor said.
According to court documents, Hossain withdrew Tk 16.4 million beyond authorised limits through 24 cheques between Jan 1 and Dec 26, 1994.
The funds were neither recorded in the cash book nor deposited into the government treasury.
Investigators found that former divisional engineers Kamrul, Sadikur and Swapan Kumar Mitra had enabled the excess withdrawals by authorising Hossain to draw the money.
After preliminary evidence of embezzlement through abuse of authority emerged, the then Chattogram district anti-corruption officer Md Nur Ahmad filed a case with Double Mooring Police Station on Oct 31, 1999.
The case was lodged under seven sections of the Penal Code and Section 5(2) of the Prevention of Corruption Act 1947.
During the investigation, the former Bureau of Anti-Corruption was dissolved and one of the suspects, Swapan, died.
He was discharged from the case on Nov 13, 2012, before investigators submitted a report against the remaining three suspect.
Based on that report, the ACC filed a chargesheet on Apr 30, 2013, accusing the trio of embezzling Tk 16.6 million.
The court framed charges against them on Jun 8, 2014.
After recording testimony from 13 witnesses, the tribunal delivered the verdict.
