A Sylhet court has sentenced industrialist Ragib Ali and his son Abdul Hai to one-year jail terms for holding posts of a local newspaper while being fugitives in a land grabbing case.
On September 8 last year, Giash Uddin Talukder, president of Chhatak Upazila Press Club, filed the case for using their names in the printer’s line of a local Bangla daily – Dainik Sylheter Dak – while they remained absconding.
Ragib was the publisher and president of the editorial board while his son was its editor, but they had fled to India soon after a court issued arrest warrants against them in a forgery case.
The court took the allegations into cognisance on September 9 and ordered Ragib and his son to explain their positions in this regard. But they did not respond.
The duo were sentenced to 14 years in jail on February 2 in a case filed for forging signatures and grabbing the land of an endowment property of Tarapur Tea Estate in Sylhet.
Until his scams surfaced, Ragib was widely known as Daanbir (philanthropist) for his financial contributions to many educational institutions.
He is the vice-chairman of South East Bank, chairman of the trustee board of Leading University and a former chairman of North South University trustee board. He founded Ragib-Rabeya Medical College in Jalalabad in Sylhet.
Ragib was in court to learn his fate but his son could not appear due to his illness, as Chief Metropolitan Magistrate Saifuzzaman Hiro delivered the verdicts on Thursday afternoon.
The court also fined them Tk5,000. In default, they will have to serve an extra month in jail.
Wednesday, July 22, 2026
