Six former MDs, 16 others land in jail over Barapukuria coal embezzlement

A court has sent 22 people, including six former managing directors of Barapukuria Coal Mining Company Ltd, to jail pending trial in a case over embezzlement of about 144,000 tonnes of coal worth Tk 2.43 billion.

Special Judge Mahmudul Karim of Dinajpur passed the orders after rejecting their bail pleas on Wednesday.

The judge set Feb 27 for charge-framing, said Aminul Islam, the public prosecutor of the Anti-Corruption Commission.

The 22 accused appeared in court and appealed for bail after the case was transferred from the Senior Special Judges Court.

The embezzlement of the coal took place between January, 2006 and July, 2018, according to the investigation.

The accused officials allegedly sold the coal at Tk 2.3 billion in open market through abuse of power, fraud, irregularities and other types of corruption, according to the charges.

The ACC initiated the case and put a travel ban on the accused persons as part of investigating after the disappearance of the coal forced a halt in operations at the nearby coal-fired Barapukuria Thermal Power Plant in July 2018.

The shutdown led to power cuts and shortage of voltage in swathes of the northern region.

The ACC first prosecuted 19 people, but later dropped the names of five people and added nine others, including seven former MDs, in the charge-sheet in 2019.

One of the seven former MDs, Mahbubur Rahman, has died. The six others named in the charge-sheet are Abdul Aziz Khan, Khurshidul Hasan, Qamruzzaman, Md Aminuzzaman, SM Nurul Awrangazeb, and Habib Uddin Ahmed.

The others named in the charge-sheet are former general managers Md Shariful Alam, Md Abul Qasem Prodhania and Abu Taher Md Nur-uz-Zaman Chowdhury; deputy general managers Muhammad Kholilur Rahman, Md Zobayer Ali, Md Morsheduzzaman, Md Habibur Rahman, Md Jahedur Rahman, and AKM Khaledul Islam; managers Masudur Rahman Howlader, Md Arifur Rahman, Syed Iman Hasan, Md Shoyebur Rahman, Ashok Kumar Halder; and assistant managers Satyendranath Barman and Md Moniuruzzaman.

Some of them had been initially arrested, but all secured bail later.