HC okays resumption of trial against Mirza Abbas

The High Court yesterday cleared the way for resuming trial proceedings against former housing and public works minister Mirza Abbas and two others in a corruption case filed over allotting a plot.

Rejecting a petition filed by Abbas seeking cancellation of the trial, the HC also ordered the lower court to finish the trial in one year. The HC lifted its 2008 order that stayed the proceedings.

The Anti Corruption Commission filed the case on July 15, 2007 against Abbas, former BNP lawmaker Ali Asgar Lobi and Mahfuzul Islam, a government official. In the case statement, the trio were made accused of illegally allotting the 19.44 katha plot in collusion with each other in Tejgaon Industrial Area for Pacific Chemicals Ltd, owned by Lobi in 2006.  Without having no-objection certificates from the Board of Investment and the Department of Environment, the land was allotted as an industrial plot, it said.

ACC lawyer Khurshid Alam Khan said Abbas and Lobi are now bail in this case while Mahfuzul is absconding.