High-profile B'desh politicians hiding in India, claim officials

Font Size -

Agencies

Posted online: Tuesday , March 04, 2008 at 10:37:30
Updated: Tuesday , March 04, 2008 at 10:58:00

Dhaka, March 4: Nearly 100 high-profile Bangladeshi politicians have fled to India and other countries to evade arrest under the military-backed government's massive anti-graft drive, officials claimed in Dhaka.

Police said 30 of the absconders have been sentenced for varied jail terms. The latest being prominent Awami League leader Abul Hasnat Abdullah who was handed down a 13-year jail term by a Dhaka court on Monday for illegally amassing wealth and concealing information.

A senior police official preferring anonymity said Abdullah was hiding in India along with his son, who was sentenced to eight-year imprisonment on a corruption charge earlier.

Abdullah, former parliamentary chief whip of Sheikh Hasina's Awami League, had been sentenced to nine years in jail by another court for tax evasion after trial in absentia.

Bangladesh police had earlier sought Interpol's assistance to track down the convicted politicians and suspects who fled the country after the anti-graft crackdown was launched by the interim administration in January last year following proclamation of state of emergency.

Police chief Noor Mohammad recently said they were trying to confirm the current whereabouts of the fugitives as many of them were hiding abroad with their family members.

The Prothom Alo newspaper quoting unnamed political sources on Tuesday reported that a number of politicians including Awami League leaders Mofazzal Hossain Chowdhury Maya, Akhtaruzzaman Chowdhury Babu, AFM Bahauddin Nasim and former BNP minister Shahjahan Siraj and lawmaker Nadeem Mostafa were hiding in India.

The daily claimed former foreign minister Morshed Khan of Bangladesh Nationalist Party and other former ministers Abdullah Al Noman and Amir Khosru Mahmud were staying in Singapore.

It said at least six BNP leaders including former lawmaker and actor Monwar Hossain Dipzol wwre now staying in Malaysia while most others were hiding in Canada and Britain.

Some 80 high profile people, mostly politicians including former prime ministers Sheikh Hasina and her arch-rival Khaleda Zia, have been arrested on graft charges.

Bookmark this Page

What is this?

Digg

On Digg, users share intersting online content by submitting links to the site. At that point, the Digg audience can vote on whether or not they think it is interesting. Articles with lots of votes, or "diggs," rise up higher on the site's main page and topical subsection pages. Another form of social sharing, this site also lets users categorize the content they are submitting to Digg and label it with descriptions of up to 350 characters. Digg users can also submit comments on each content item submitted to the site.

To register, go to: http://digg.com/register

del.icio.us

At its most basic level, del.icio.us allows users to save their bookmarks online. Del.icio.us also gives users the ability to "tag" their bookmarks with descriptive category names. For example, someone who has bookmarked multiple Web pages that deal with the Washington Nationals baseball team could tag those links with any terms they want, like "baseball," "nationals," "natsfan," etc.

As members of a "social bookmarking" community, del.icio.us sers can also see how many other people have bookmarked the same pages, and they can look at those users' bookmark collections to find other interesting online content.

To register, go to: http://del.icio.us/register

Reddit

Reddit allows users to submit news articles and other online content to the site. Users also give articles a thumbs-up or thumbs-down. Reddit then uses those votes to build a user profile and to find articles to recommend to you. Users can also submit comments on items posted to the site.

To register, go to: http://reddit.com/login

Digg

My Yahoo

Fark

del.icio.us

Newsvine

Rate this Article

Rating

Post Comments

Name*		Email ID*
Subject*		Country*
Message*	Characters remaining

TERMS OF USE: The views represented here are not neccesarily endorsed by www.expressindia.com and its allied websites. All messages will be moderated and no message that has inflammatory, abusive, derogatory language or any language deemed unfit for publication by the editor will be displayed. Though it will be endeavoured that as many messages as possible be displayed, there will be time lag between the submission and publication of the messages. The website reserves the right to publish or reject any message.

I agree to the terms of use.