My child was called `daughter of a fraud': Regent Chairman to Court

A Dhaka court on today has refused to grant bail to Regent Group Chairman, Mohammad Shahid, in a case filed on charge of fraudulaty. 

Dhaka’s special judge court-6 judge Al Asad Md Asifuzzaman rejected the bail sudmitted by his lawyer.

Shahid and 5 others were charged for their alleged involvement with embezzlement of government funds in the name of coronavirus sample collection and treatment without having any license. On September 30 last year, Anti-corruption commission ACC filed the case against them. 

They embezzled over TK 1.37 crore through testing samples of Covid-19 patients in a government-run Lab Nipsom, according to the case statement. It also details that the accused converted Regent Hospital, which is shut down later, into a Covid-19 Hospital without renewing its license and abused power as they wanted benefit by illegal means.  

`My family has been ruined. My 16-year-old daughter stopped going to school. My wife cannot leave home,” Shahid said before the court during the hearing on a bail petition. He told the court that his daughter attempted to commit suicide as her classmates called her `daughter of a fraud'. 

Shahed also told the court that when the number of Covid-19 patients was increasing in 2020, the then health secretary proposed to him to provide treatment of Covid-19 patients in his two hospitals. After the proposal, his hospitals started testing samples of Covid-19 patients without fees.

Shahed added, `I did not know any of the accused, including former director general of Directorate General of Health Service (DGHS), Abul Kalam Azad. I did not receive any amount of money which was mentioned in the First Information report (FIR) of the case.