Former Chief Justice Surendra Kumar Sinha. COURTESY
A Dhaka court sentenced former Chief Justice Surendra Kumar Sinha to 11 years in prison in a case involving the laundering of Tk 4 crore taken in credit from the Farmers Bank, now known as the Padma Bank.
On Tuesday, Dhaka Special Judge 4 Shaikh Nazmul Alam sentenced the former top judge of Bangladesh to seven years in prison for money laundering and another four years for criminal breach of trust. The prison terms will run concurrently.
"(Justice) SK Sinha is the principal beneficiary of the laundered money," the court said in its verdict.
Among the 10 others tried in the case, Tangail residents, Md Shahjahan and Niranjan Chandra Saha, were acquitted as the charges against them were not proven.
The rest have been given different terms of jail and slapped with fines.
AKM Shamim, former managing director of Farmers Bank, has been jailed for four years and fined by Tk 50,000.
Tangail resident Ranjit Chandra Saha, a personal aide to Justice Sinha, and his wife Shantri Roy got three years each and fined by Tk 10,000.
Five other former officials of Farmers Bank were sentenced to three years in jail each and fined by Tk 25,000.
They are former senior executive vice president and head of credit Gazi Salahuddin, former chairman of the bank's audit committee Mahbubul Haque Chishty, former first vice presidents Swapan Kumar Roy and Shafiuddin Ahmed Askary, and former vice-president Md Lutful Haque.
Among the convicts, Shamim, Salahuddin, Swapan, Lutful, Shahjahan and Niranjan were out on bail, while Chishty was brought to the court from prison for the verdict. They were taken to jail following the verdict.
Justice Sinha, Shafiuddin, Ranjit and Shantri were tried as fugitives.
According to the case statement, the accused arranged a loan of Tk4 crore using forged documents from the Gulshan branch of the then Farmers Bank and transferred it to Justice Sinha's personal account through pay-order.
The former chief justice later transferred the amount to another account in cash, cheques and pay-orders, a punishable offence under the Prevention of Corruption Act and the Prevention of Money Laundering Act, it said.
The Anti-Corruption Commission (ACC) said in October 2018 that it found evidence of fraud involving transactions of the funds with fake documents by businessmen Shahjahan and Niranjan.
In July 2019, ACC Director Syed Iqbal Hossain filed the case against Justice Sinha and 10 others with its Integrated District Office-1 in Dhaka. In December the same year, investigators pressed charges against them.
The trial kicked off in August last year after the court framed charges against Justice Sinha and 10 others.
Second case by ACC against Justice Sinha
Last month, the ACC filed another case against the former top judge accusing him of abuse of office involving land plots allotted to him and a member of his family from the Dhaka city development authority (Rajuk).
According to details of the case started on October 7, Justice Sinha abused his office to get himself allotted a five-katha land plot at the capital’s Uttara Residential Area, where he constructed a nine-storey building.
The money spent for acquiring the plot and constructing the building was “not earned through legal means”, according to investigators.
ACC Secretary Anwar Hossain Hawlader told the media at the time that Justice Sinha paid Rajuk Tk 7.5 lakh for the plot.
The case documents state that an evaluation by an independent engineering firm found that Tk 6.13 crore was spent for the construction of the nine-storey building on the plot at Uttara’s Sector-4.
Sinha also abused his office to allot a three-katha plot at the Rahuk’s Purbachal Housing Project for his brother Narendra Kumar Sinha, according to the ACC.
“He later converted the plot to a five-khata one by misusing his power and also made the Rajuk to transfer the allotment from Purbachal to Uttara,” Hawlader said.
The first top judge to quit
Justice Sinha came under fire from the ruling Awami League over his verdict to scrap the 16th amendment to the constitution, which restored parliament’s power to sack top judges on the grounds of incapability and misconduct.
He left the country on leave in October 2017. About six weeks later, he submitted his resignation from abroad nearly three months before the end of his term to become the first Chief Justice in the history of Bangladesh to quit. He now lives in the US.
Justice Sinha was appointed to the top court as the chief justice in January 2015, with his term scheduled to end on January 31, 2018.
Following his resignation, the Supreme Court said in rare statement that Justice Sinha had been facing 11 specific charges, including corruption, money laundering, financial irregularities, and moral blunder.
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