The High Court on Wednesday granted one-year bail to five day labourers of Phulbari upazila in Kurigram over three months after their arrest on charge of embezzling government money even though they denied any knowledge of the funds.
The day labourers are — Phulmoni Rani, a widow, Ranjit Kumar, Prabhash Chandra, Kamal Chandra Roy, and Nikhil Chandra Barman.
The bench of Justice Mustafa Zaman Islam and Justice Mohammad Ali passed the order during a virtual hearing.
Advocate Mohammad Shishir Monir stood for the petitioners for free, while Deputy Attorney General Amit Dasgupta represented the state.
Advocate Shishir drew the attention of the court after attaching a newspaper report in this regard.
According to the report, one Swapan approached the five labourers of Naudabas village in Phulbari offering to help them in getting the government’s Covid-19 incentive money. He asked them to open accounts with Sonali Bank to get the assistance.
Being duped, the labourers opened accounts at the bank’s Nageshwari branch.
Later, Swapan took them to Dhaka on the pretext of taking some signatures of them on some documents. They signed the documents without knowing the contents.
After some days, Tk 48.45 lakh was deposited to the account of Ranjit, Tk 65.72 lakh to Prabhas, Tk 40.71 lakh to the account of Subol, Tk 42.49 lakh to the account of Kamal, and Tk 48.70 lakh to the account of Phulmoni. But they had no information about the deposited money.
On July 1, a case was filed against nine people, including the five day labourers, for embezzling Tk 2.46 crore through submission of a fake advice of Sreepur upazila accountant's office in Gazipur.
Manager of Sreepur headquarter branch of Sonali Bank lodged the complaint with Sreepur police station for embezzling the money.
The other accused of the case are — Bazlur Rashid, accountant officer of Sreepur upazila office, office auditor Arifur Rahman, Tanvir and Shahena Akter.
On July 2, police arrested the day labourers from their respective homes.
A lower court earlier denied bail to them.
