A Sylhet court on Tuesday sent Regent Hospital owner Md Shahed alias Shahed Karim to jail in three cases filed over cheque frauds.
Sylhet Senior Judicial Magistrate Court Judge Anjan Kanti Dey issued the order in the cases filed by Haji Shamsul Maola, owner of Maola Stone Crusher Mill.
The court also directed the police to investigate another fraud case filed by the same plaintiff and submit a report.
Earlier on Tuesday morning, police produced Shahid Karim in court under tight security as on November 8, a Sylhet court had issued an arrest warrant against him in the fraud cases.
Assistant Public Prosecutor (APP) of Sylhet District and Sessions Judge, Abdus Sattar, who is also the lawyer of the plaintiff, said altogether four cases had been filed against Shahed.
Shahed, after taking stones from Shamsul, provided two cheques of Tk10 lakh and another of Tk50,000. All three cheques were dishonoured by a bank due to the amount not being in his account. Three separate cases were filed for each of the cheques.
Another case was filed against Shahed on February 11 for providing a fake cheque of Tk10 lakh to buy stones from another business. The court asked police to investigate the case and submit a report.
Shahed was arrested by the Rapid Action Battalion (RAB) from Satkhira in the early hours of July 15, 2020 when he was trying to flee to India on a boat. He was later airlifted to the capital.
Shahed was on the run since health officials and RAB raided the Uttara and Mirpur branches of Regent Hospital on July 6, following complaints that the hospital had been issuing fake Covid-19 certificates, as well as charging exorbitant fees for the testing and treatment of patients.
RAB also found evidence of at least 6,000 fake Covid-19 test certificates during the raid.
The next day, RAB filed a case against 17 people, including Shahed, at the police station.
So far he has over 50 cases filed against him. According to RAB’s intel to July, Shahed embezzled around Tk2.50 crore to Tk3 crore from different people through different fraudulent activities.
According to sources, he embezzled over Tk100 crore from two multi-level marketing (MLM) companies.
