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Published : 26 Apr 2023, 12:43 PM
A court has ordered a ‘fraud’ investigation into the family of former Bangladesh Ambassador to Belgium Sanaul Haque, who refused to host Sheikh Hasina and Sheikh Rehana after their father’s assassination.
The court order was issued on Mar 30 by Dhaka District and Sessions Judge AHM Habibur Rahman, but was published on Tuesday, said Bimul Samaddar, the additional public prosecutor for the court.
The suspects in the investigation are Sanaul Haque’s sons Irtefa Mamun and Sumon Ifat Mamun, and daughters Tasnim Jafrullah, Trina Rubaiya Mamun and Saida Hussaini Mamun.
The judge asked the Dhaka Chief Metropolitan Magistrate’s Court and the Anti-Corruption Commission to take steps to initiate a case against Sumon Ifat Mamun. It also instructed social welfare officials and probation officers in Dhaka to regularly check up on Irtefa Mamun, who is disabled.
The judge gave the Dhaka Chief Metropolitan Magistrate’s Court and the ACC until May 25 to file their report.
Irtefa Mamun, Sanaul Haque’s eldest son, is physically disabled, according to the case documents. In 2015, the court appointed his brother Sumon Ifat Mamun as his guardian.
The allegations of fraud are linked to a case over a property sale in Gulshan by the five siblings, with Sumon acting as Irtefa’s guardian.
They filed another case last year asking for permission to sell their Dhanmondi house too. Their father’s name was slightly changed in the case documents to AM Sanaul Haque. That raised a red flag.
Sumon and his sisters filed a document in that case that drew the suspicion of the court. The court then asked for details on the identity of Sanaul Haque. Though they did not reveal his identity at first, they later admitted their father was the former ambassador to Belgium and had possessed landed property in Dhanmondi and Gulshan during the military rule of Ayub Khan.
The court rejected the property sale on the grounds of the unusual circumstances. The court also ordered a report on how Irtefa’s share of the money was spent after the sale of the Gulshan house.
Sumon submitted a report accordingly, but the calculations were deemed unacceptable and the court scrapped Sumon’s guardianship of his brother and his property.
In his order, the judge wrote that no information or account statement over whether the interests of Irtefa were protected during the sale of the Gulshan house and how his share of the money was spent was sent to the court or the social welfare offices. As such, it was necessary to verify whether there has been ‘fraud, a breach of trust, and corruption’.
In 1975, Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman’s daughters Sheikh Hasina, now the prime minister of Bangladesh, and Sheikh Rehana were guests at the home of Ambassador Sanaul Haque in Belgium. After the horrific assassination of Bangabandhu and the killing of most of his family, Sanaul Haque refused to host them.
Prime Minister Hasina has said at various times that the former Belgium ambassador refused to shelter them after the killings. The family then had to take political asylum in India after travelling through Germany. After six years in exile, Hasina returned to Bangladesh in 1981 and became the leader of the Awami League.
