Awami League lawmaker Salim lands in jail

 

Live Correspondent: The Dhaka Special Judge’s Court-7 on Sunday sent ruling Awami League lawmaker Haji Mohammad Salim to the Dhaka Central Jail to serve a 10-year jail sentence given by the High Court for corruption. Judge Shahidul Islam passed the order after the lawmaker surrendered to the court as per a High Court judgment.

Dhaka Central Jail senior superintendent Suvas Ghosh told New Age that Salim was kept at the hospital in the jail. The High Court on March 9, 2021, pronounced the judgment in Salim’s appeal against the Special Court’s verdict. In the judgment, the court upheld his imprisonment for 10 years but scrapped another sentence of three-year jail.

The court had also asked Salim to surrender to the special court in 30 days after receiving the certified copy of the judgment, which he received on April 25, 2022.

Salim left the country for Thailand on April 30 in a reported secret manner triggering criticism. He, however, returned home from Thailand on May 4 amid criticism over his foreign trip despite being a convicted person.

Salim’s lawyer Sayed Ahmed Raza told New Age on Sunday that Salim would appeal to the Appellate Division today or tomorrow challenging his sentence upheld by the High Court.

The Special Court on April 27, 2008 jailed Salim for 10 years for possessing a wealth of Tk 67.43 crore beyond his known sources of income and three more years for hiding the information of the wealth of Tk 8.70 crore in the wealth statement submitted to the Anti-Corruption Commission.

Salim’s wife Gulshan Ara Begum submitted his wealth statement to the commission on March 27, 2007, with permission from the High Court as Salim had been staying abroad after the proclamation of the state of emergency on January 11, 2007.

Salim, a businessperson-cum-politician surrendered to the special court in 2009, and he was later freed on bail by the High Court after he had filed the appeal against the verdict.

The High Court on November 1, 2011, after hearing the appeal scrapped the special court verdict. The commission preferred an appeal against the HC judgment and the Appellate Division on January 12, 2015, canceled the HC judgment.

The apex court had also asked the High Court to dispose of Salim’s appeal expeditiously after a fresh hearing on the appeal ‘on merit’.

After the rehearing, the High Court on March 9, 2021, upheld Salim’s imprisonment for 10 years but scrapped the three-year sentence. It also upheld the special court verdict for fining Salim Tk 10 lakh.

The court asked the government to confiscate 86 plots of land from Salim and 40 other plots of land from his wife in Dhaka, Narayanganj, and Munshiganj, along with a huge number of movable and immovable property worth Tk 67.43 crore.

The court observed that Salim and his wife acquired that property from 1991 to 2007 unlawfully, dishonestly, and beyond their known sources of income.

The case was filed by the commission during the military-backed caretaker government in 2007 for accumulating wealth worth Tk 14.65 crore beyond known sources of his income.

Dhaka, 22 May, (campuslive24.com)//BSC

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