Yunus, 3 others get bail in labour law violation case

Nobel laureate Professor Muhammad Yunus and three other top Grameen Telecom officials were granted bail today by the Labour Appellate Tribunal.

The four filed an appeal with the Labour Appellate Tribunal, challenging a Dhaka Labour Court decision in a labor law infringement case.

They also filed bail petitions with the tribunal after they arrived around 10:45 a.m. The tribunal accepted the appeal and gave the four bail till disposal of the appeal.

"We challenged the sentence at the Labour Appellate Tribunal, seeking my clients‍‍` acquittal in the case this morning," Prof Yunus‍‍`s lawyer Abdullah-Al-Mamun told the media.

"We submitted a petition, containing some 25 points against the sentence," he said.

On January 1, Sheikh Merina Sultana, chairman of Dhaka‍‍`s Third Labour Court, sentenced Yunus, chairman of Grameen Telecom, and its directors Ashraful Hassan, Nurjahan Begum, and M Shahjahan to six months in jail in a case.

Following separate bail pleas, the court granted all four a month‍‍`s bail shortly after the verdict.

The four were also fined Tk 30,000 individually, or face an additional 25 days in prison.

Furthermore, the court ordered them to comply with the relevant sections of the Labour Act of 2006 within one month.

The sections of labor law under which the case was filed entail a potential six-month sentence.

On September 9, 2021, Labour Inspector (General) SM Arifuzzaman filed the case against Yunus and the three others.

The court framed charges in the case on June 6 last year. Since It also recorded four prosecution witnesses.

According to the case documents, Department of Inspection for Factories and Establishments (DIFE) officials inspected the Grameen Telecom office in the capital‍‍`s Mirpur on August 16, 2021, and found several violations of labour laws there.