The government has decided to take back plots awarded to war criminals during the last tenure of the BNP and Jamaat-e-Islami coalition.
Published : 13 Jul 2016, 01:22 PM
“The plots RAJUK distributed to war criminals have been revoked,” said Housing and Public Works Minister Mosharraf Hossain at the Secretariat on Wednesday.
“Some of these war criminals, I will not mention names, gave them to real estate developers, who are not at fault here.”
“So they’ll keep their share and we’ll take back the rest.”
The minister laughed when reporters asked why he will not name the war criminals. “There are many of them. Those who received these plots on record will have these taken away.”
In 2006, former chief of Jamaat, Motiur Rahman Nizami, was given a plot in Banani, one of Dhaka’s richest area, as “recognition of his work for the state”
Then industries minister, Nizami was executed this year for crimes against humanity during Bangladesh’s Liberation War as head of the Al-Badr, a vicious militia that collaborated with the Pakistan Army.
RAJUK, Dhaka’s development authority, had allotted the five Katha plot to Nizami after a board meeting on May 21, but it had already been allotted to one Azizur Rahim in 1995. (1 Katha = 1.65 decimals)
An investigation was launched after Rahim filed a complaint saying he already paid Tk 300,000 in installments.
Nizami, after receiving the plot, gave power of attorney to Mission Developers Ltd, a firm owned by Jamaat leaders, a move not approved by RAJUK.
A building now stands on the plot at Road-18, Banani. It is named ‘Mission Nahar’ after Nizami’s wife Shamsun Nahar Nizami.