The Dhaka Cyber Tribunal (Bangladesh) has issued arrest warrants against the wife and the son of convicted war criminal Salauddin Quader Chowdhury as well as another accused in the case filed over the leak of the draft verdict of SQ Chowdhury’s war crimes case.
The tribunal’s Special Public Prosecutor Md Nazrul Islam Shamim told the Dhaka Tribune: “On October 13, Judge KM Shamsul Alam passed the order after taking the charge sheet of the case into cognisance; and asked the Dhanmondi and Satkhira police stations, under which the three reside, to submit execution reports on October 30.
“The court also asked the jail authorities to produce four other accused, who are now in jail, before it on the same day,” he added.
After completing probe into the much-talked-about draft verdict leak, DB Inspector Mohammad Shahjahan, also the investigation officer of the case, placed the charge sheet before the Dhaka Chief Metropolitan Magistrate’s court on August 28.
After receiving the charge sheet, the court on October 12 transferred the case to the cyber tribunal for trial.
The charge sheeted accused are Salauddin Quader’s wife Farhat Quader Chowdhury, son Hummam Quader Chowdhury, his manager Mahbubul Ahsan, his counsel Barrister AKM Fakhrul Islam, Fakhrul’s junior counsel Mehedi Hasan, International Crimes Tribunal (ICT) employees Nayan Ali and Faruk Hossain.
Out of the accused, Salauddin Quader’s wife, son and Mehedi Hassan are now on the run while the rest are in jail.
The IO also mentioned the names of 25 people as prosecution witnesses in the charge sheet.
According to the charge sheet, the accused persons leaked parts of the draft verdict by uploading it on websites to make the war crimes trial controversial and questioned. The investigators also found that the accused had made huge investments to leak the draft verdict, reads the charge sheet.
On November 5, DB Inspector Md Fazlur Rahman filed a case with Shahbagh police station accusing Nayan, Faruk, and Mehedi by name and also against several unnamed others and raided the office of Fakkrul’s chamber and seized various documents related to the verdict’s leak.