Now Austrian citizen claims ownership of Moudud's House

Just 15 days after Rajdhani Unnayan Kartripakkha (Rajuk) evicted BNP leader Moudud Ahmed from a Gulshan 2 house, an Austrian citizen named Karim Franz Solaiman claimed its ownership. Introducing himself as the only son of an Austrian woman named Inje Mariah Flaz, Solaiman said he has already applied to the government and Rajuk to mutate the house in his name as he is the the lone legal heir of his mother's property. The house situated on 1.13 bighas land on Gulshan Avenue belonged to a Pakistani national Mohammad Ehsan, said to be Solaiman's father, who had received the rights to the house from the then Dacca Improvement Trust (DIT) in 1960. Ehsan and Mariah, who was named as a co-owner of the house later in 1965, left Bangladesh during the Liberation War. They gained ownership of the house through a lease deed on September 14 and through a registered sale deed in June 1980 in favour of Inge Flatz. Solaiman made the claims at a press meet at the National Press Club in Dhaka on Wednesday. After independence, the house became abandoned and was listed by the Bangladesh government as vested property. After Mariah applied for the release of the land claiming that it was mistakenly marked as vested property, the government had divested the property by executing a registered sale deed. In the media briefing, he claimed the ownership of his family, which he said was established by a Supreme Court verdict which caused the eviction of Moudud on June 7. During the eviction drive, the house was freed from the occupation of Moudud and his brother Manjur Ahmed. Solaiman said he already submitted an application to Rajuk with documents supporting him being the only child of of Mariah. The Anti-Corruption Commission (ACC) sued Moudud and his brother in 2013 for grabbing the house with forged documents. The case also says the house was left abandoned by Ehsan and Maria in 1971, where Moudud had been living since 1973. The documents of the house say Mariah died on March 30, 1985. But Moudud and Manjur in their dockets showed that they signed a deed to buy the house in August 10 that year. As the deed was not implemented, the two brothers filed a case which was quashed in 1993. Manjur moved the High Court in 2001, which in 2005 asked for mutation. In 2010, the High Court accepted a petition to mutate the property in his name. On August 2, 2016, the apex court had scrapped a High Court verdict that ordered the house’s mutation in Manjur's name. It also had rejected the ACC case filed against the siblings for grabbing the land of the Tk300 crore house. Both sides had filed petitions with the Appellate Division to review its verdict. On June 4, the appeals court rejected both petitions.