Fraudsters exploit former justice’s good nature
Former justice Bhabani Prasad Singha is well known for his humanitarian work. And due to this very renown, a fraud gang decided to target him six months ago.
On the evening of May 30, the former judge of the High Court Division of the Supreme Court got a call from an unknown number. The caller introduced himself as Rezaul Karim.
The man first talked about the charitable activities Bhabani is involved in and praised him profusely. Rezaul mentioned that he also does various kinds of work for public welfare.
Rezaul said he had a company jointly owned by people in Canada and Japan. Through the company, located in the capital's Mirpur, he runs the welfare activities. He requested Bhabani to visit the company office. Bhabani, without thinking much, agreed to do so.
Two days later, Bhabani and his driver Mohsin Miah went to the man's office, where they met two more men, who introduced themselves as Dr Intiaz Ali Khan alias Shahnewaz and Bikash Chakrabarty.
At that time, Intiaz talked about their philanthropic work. He told the former justice that they were doing such work with involvement of respected persons in society.
Rezaul, Intiaz and Bikash requested Bhabani to get involved in their work. And so, a cordial relationship was established among all of them.
The three then told Bhabani that they need a lot of money to jointly do humanitarian activities. They planned on creating a fund of Tk 1.60 crore to this end. At that time, Bhabani believed them and gave Tk 5 lakh on their request.
Later, the victim gave an additional Tk 36 lakh as loan to the three from June 14 to 16.
After taking the money, the three switched off their phones. When the victim got suspicious, he went to the Mirpur office and came to know that they had left with their belongings.
This whole ordeal took a toll on Bhabani, as he became sick.
On August 28, driver Mohsin filed a case against three men with Mirpur Police Station, stating that they defrauded Bhabani of Tk 41 lakh.
The names of the three were later ascertained to be Zubayel, Ashraful Islam and Minto.
The series of incidents have been recorded in the case documents, which this newspaper obtained.
According to the documents, the accused used fake names while communicating with the victim. Zubayel introduced himself as Dr Intiaz alias Shahnewaz, while Ashraful as Rezaul and Minto as Bikash.
On November 24, Police Bureau of Investigation arrested Zubayel from Dhaka's Ashulia area.
The next day, Dhaka Metropolitan Magistrate Mehedi Hasan placed Zubayel on a five-day remand for interrogation, after PBI produced him before the court with a seven-day remand prayer.
Zubayel is a leader of a fraud gang, whose network of fraudsters is spread across the country, said Inspector Meshba Uddin, investigation officer of the case, quoting a police forwarding report submitted to the court.
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