EC director among 11 sued by ACC
Anti-Corruption Commission (ACC) yesterday sued 11 people, including a director of the Election Commission (EC) in Dhaka, in two cases.
With the latest, ACC filed five cases this week accusing EC staffers, former ward councillor, former UP chairman, and Rohingyas.
Shuvash Chandra Dutta, deputy director (DD) of ACC Headquarters, and Sharif Uddin, deputy assistant director (DAD) of ACC's Chattogram Integrated office-2, filed the cases with Chattogram Integrated office-1 and office-2, said the ACC sources.
DAD Sharif Uddin filed the case accusing Khorshed Alam, director of the EC head office, Mahfuzul Islam, staff of Ramu upazila EC office, Rasel Barua, office assistant of Patiya upazila EC office, and Mostafa Farque, former technical expert of Chattogram EC office.
DD Shuvash lodged another case against Joynal Abedin, office assistant of Double Mooring EC office, Nur Ahmed, MLSS of Bandarban's Rowangchhari upazila EC office, Naim Uddin, data entry operator (temporary) of Teknaf, Obaidullah, and Shamsur Rahman, brokers, and Foyaz Ullah, and his wife Mahmuda Khatun, a Rohingya couple.
DAD Sharif Uddin told The Daily Star, "During an investigation in 2019, ACC found that 55,310 persons including several Rohingya people had been illegally included in voter list using the official laptops of EC.
"During the primary probe, ACC also found an official laptop of EC had remained missing for long. While the incident started investigating, ACC found seven designated laptops of EC were also missing. Though the incident was very sensitive, there was no frantic effort by the then EC officials to recover those devices but three cases were filed in this regard from 2009 to 2014," he added.
The laptops went missing during the tenure of Khorshed Alam in Chattogram according to the case statement filed by ACC.
"However, EC head office had formed a probe committee headed by Khorshed Alam to investigate how Rohingya notorious robber Nur Alam, who was killed in a gunfight in Teknaf in 2019, managed Bangladeshi NID which was recovered after his death," said DAD Sharif.
The ACC official said, "While probing Rohingya Nur Alam's NID card incident, Khorshed Alam technically avoided the issue of missing Laptops and submitted his report before commission without mentioning the name of EC staffers who were responsible for stolen laptops."
But while probing, ACC found that Rohingya Nur Alam's data had been uploaded to the EC's server from a missing laptop.
DAD Sharif said "As the missing incident took place in the tenure of Khorshed, he tried to save himself and the other accused to avoid their responsibilities that time in his report.
"ACC filed the case as they embezzled the government property [devices] and illegally added the data of 55,310 persons including Rohingyas and others in the NID server in collaboration with each other," said the DAD.
DD Shuvash Chandra in his case statement said Joynal Abedin, Nur Ahmed, and Naim Uddin, in collaboration with each other, helped Rohingya Foyaz and his wife Mahmuda to upload their data in NID server creating fake birth registration and using the designated electronic devices and took benefits over the issue.