SC for starting trial of Mridha

The Supreme Court today upheld a High Court verdict that directed a Chittagong court to accept the corruption allegations against railway's suspended general manager Yusuf Ali Mridha in a case filed for irregularities in recruitment process and to start his trial.

A five-member bench of the Appellate Division headed by Chief Justice Surendra Kumar Sinha dismissed an appeal filed against the HC verdict.

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The Anti Corruption Commission had dropped the name of Mridha, who was caught with Tk 70 lakh inside the Pilkhana Headquarters of the Border Guard Bangladesh in April 2012, from the charge sheet of the case.

Mridha was suspended on April 15, 2012, a week after he was caught. The money had allegedly been collected from railway job seekers.

The then Railway Minister Suranjit Sengupta had to resign over the cash haul, following allegations that the money was being taken to his Jigatola residence. Suranjit has all along denied the claim.  

The cash haul, which came to be known as 'railwaygate scandal', later exposed widespread irregularities in recruitments in different tiers of the railway.

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ACC lawyer Khurshid Alam Khan told The Daily Star that the commission filed the case with Kotwali Police Station in Chittagong on September 13, 2012 against several persons including Mridha and teachers of Khagrachhari Women College- Abdul Wadud Bhuiyan, Zahirul Islam and Tapan Kumar Das on charge of committing irregularities in the process for recruiting employees to Bangladesh Railway.

Later on, the accused three teachers filed a petition with the HC praying to this court for scrapping the proceedings of the case against them.

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On April 26 last year, the HC rejected their petition and ordered the Metropolitan Special Judge's Court of Chittagong to accept the corruption allegations against Yusuf Ali Mridha and to continue trial proceedings of the case.

The HC also ordered the ACC to take appropriate legal action against the beneficiaries of the irregularities in the process for recruiting employees to Bangladesh Railway through holding investigation, the ACC lawyer said. 

The accused teachers then filed an appeal with the SC challenging the HC verdict.