A Dhaka court on Monday ordered the Police Bureau of Investigation (PBI) for further investigation into the case against Sharmin Jahan, the owner of Aparajita International, for supplying fake N95 masks to Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujib Medical University (BSMMU).
Additional Chief Metropolitan Magistrate Md Abu Bakar Siddique directed the PBI to conduct a probe and submit its report by December 8.
The court passed the order after hearing on a no confidence petition filed by BSMMU Proctor Prof Syed Mozaffar Ahmed before the court rejecting a final report that did not find any evidence of the incident.
In the petition, the prosecution said the previous case investigation officer (IO) did not investigate properly and submitted a final report dropping the name of the accused from charges.
The IO submitted the probe report saying that the complainant did not supply documents, which was completely false and fabricated, the prosecution said.
On April 28, IO Md Morshed Hossain Khan, inspector of Detective Branch (DB), submitted the final report to the Dhaka Chief Metropolitan Magistrate's Court.
The report terms the case a "matter of factual error", as no evidence was found against the lone accused during a nine-month investigation.
On July 25, police arrested Sharmin Jahan over the case filed by the BSMMU accusing the company of supplying fake masks to the hospital.
An assistant registrar at the Dhaka University (DU), Sharmin is a student from the academic session 1998-99 from the university's Islamic Studies Department. She joined the university as a section officer and was later promoted to assistant registrar.
She also served as the president of the Bangladesh Chhatra League unit at DU's Bangladesh-Kuwait Maitree Hall and as a member of the Awami League’s central sub-committee on women and children affairs for a term.
Soon after the Covid-19 pandemic unfolded in March 2020, BSMMU started collecting samples to conduct tests from suspected coronavirus patients.
In May, the state-run facility decided to start treating Covid-19 patients and went for immediate procurement of safety gears for healthcare workers.
Aparajita International won a contract to supply 11,000 N95 masks.
On June 30, 2020, it supplied the first batch of 1,300 masks and the second lot of 460 was delivered the same day to the BSMMU. The third lot of 1,000 masks were supplied on July 2 and another 700 masks in the fourth lot on July 13.
The masks supplied in the first and second batches did not have any issues, but the third and fourth lots were found to be faulty, according to the case documents.