Dhaka, July 5 (bdnews24.com)—Former caretaker adviser Geeteara Safiya Choudhury, whom police had described as untraceable in a case of forcible occupation of a Gulshan property, appeared in court for a bail hearing on Sunday.
Her lawyer Romel Chowdhury had earlier submitted the petition to Dhaka metropolitan magistrate Munshi Abdul Majid, who 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, the Choudhurys' son Nazim Farhan Choudhury, Geeteara's brother Abu Rushd Tareq, Shamsunnahar Tareq, Sakhawat Hossain, Bipul Hossain and Yar Ali.
Sunday's petition sought bail for all the remaining 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 bdnews24.com in the court on Sunday that the three defendants who had secured bail earlier had threatened to chase him out of the country.
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 Choudhury 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.
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