Court staff in panic after three arrested

Arrest panic is prevailing among a section of court employees in Nilphamari as police arrested the District and Sessions Judge's Court's session clerk and his two associates on April 22 on charge of forging charge sheets and relevant court orders.

The arrestees, session clerk Ismail Hossain, advocate clerk Abul Kashem and former postal department employee Md Taslimuddin replaced the genuine papers by putting fake signatures of three judicial magistrates.

They committed the crime allegedly after taking bribe to save two postal department employees who are accused in cases of Anti-Corruption Commission (ACC) on charge of misappropriating huge amount of money from the postal bank of Nilphamari main post office in 2005.

Officer in Charge (OC-Investigation) of Sadar Police Station Ershad Hossain said, “Main accused Ismail Hossain gave confessional statement to the magistrate under Section 164 and provided important information and we sought two days remand for advocate clerk Abul Kashem.”

Just after arrest of the three accused, the judge court's bench clerk Jamiar Rahman hurriedly took leave citing the sickness of his daughter and since then, he kept his cell phone switched off and remained out of reach, office sources said.

During an internal audit in 2005, the postal department authority detected misappropriation of Tk 4.32 crore by some employees in the postal bank of Nilphamari head post office, said Axmoy Kumar Roy, public prosecutor (PP) of Nilphamari District and Sessions Judge's Court.

Regarding the matter, the then postmaster Torab Ali filed two cases with Sadar Police Station accusing seven people including assist postmaster Mir Nurul Islam and postal operators Ahmedul Islam, Taslimuddin, Golam Nabi, Azharul Islam, Abdus Salek and Liakat Ali.

The cases were later transferred to the ACC and the latter after investigation filed charge sheets against all the accused in mid 2016 and the documents were then sent to Senior Special Judge's Court from the Court of Chief Judicial Magistrate on August 28 in 2016 for further course of action, the PP said.

But investigation found that arrested session clerk Ismail Hossain of the court concerned mysteriously showed the charge sheet to be received two months later on October 31, 2016.

“At time of hearing of the cases in Senior Special Judge's Court on February 27 in 2017, I noticed dissimilarities in case documents as names of two charge sheeted accused Taslimuddin and Liakat Ali were not in papers,” the PP said.

“I drew attention of the judge who sent the suspected papers to the deputy director of ACC's Dinajpur region through the Chief Judicial Magistrate's Court where the forgery was detected,” he added.

The court finally observed that a syndicate filed forged charge sheet and court orders replacing the genuine ones and also put fake signatures of Chief Judicial Magistrate Sheikh Md Nasirul Huq, Senior Judicial Magistrate Md Samiul Huq and Senior Judicial Magistrate Muhammad Akram Hossain.

As per directive of the chief judicial magistrate, acting Nazir of the court Md Sohel Shah filed a case with Sadar Police Station accusing session clerk Ismail Hossain and his unnamed associates on April 19.