The High Court has issued a rule asking authorities concerned to explain in four weeks as to why it shall not grant bail to deputy assistant engineer Shafiqul Islam, arrested in three separate graft cases filed over swindling money from the Rooppur Nuclear Power Plant’s housing project.
A virtual bench of Justice Md Nazrul Islam Talukder and Justice Ahmed Sohel passed the order on Monday after holding hearing on a plea seeking bail for the engineer.
The Anti-Corruption Commission (ACC) on December 12, 2019, filed the three cases with its Pabna integrated office for plundering money of the housing project.
The anti-graft body arrested 13 people including Shafiqul Islam on that same day.
According to media reports, the purchase prices of various items to furnish the project’s 966 apartments for the Russian engineers and others were abnormally higher than the market prices.
The reports claimed that each pillow was bought at Tk5,957, and the cost of carrying it to an apartment was Tk760.
The cost of an electric stove was Tk7,747 while the carrying cost of it from the ground floor to the top one was Tk6,650, the reports said, adding the price of an electric iron was Tk4,154 while the carrying cost Tk2,945.
