Court asks govt to let 3 officials be charged

A Dhaka court yesterday asked the public administration ministry and Rajdhani Unnayan Katripakkha (Rajuk) to immediately approve the inclusion of the names of three government officials as accused in two cases filed over the deadly Rana Plaza collapse last year.
The officials are Md Kabir Hossain, former Savar upazila nirbahi officer; Uttam Kumar Roy, chief executive officer of Savar Municipality, and Awlad Hossain, building inspector of Savar Municipality.
Senior Judicial Magistrate Afroza Sheuly passed the order after Bijoy Krishna Kar, assistant superintendent of police of CID and also the investigation officer of the cases, submitted two petitions seeking steps from the ministry's secretary and the Rajuk's chairman for the approval to include them as accused in the cases.        
In the petitions, Bijoy said he found negligence of the three officials during construction of the building in terms of its approval and monitoring. But he could not include their names in the charge sheet without the government's approval, he said.     
The court also asked the IO to submit the probe reports of the cases by November 6.
Three cases were filed following Rana Plaza collapse on April 24 last year that killed at least 1,135 people and injured hundreds others.
Of the three cases, Rajuk filed a case against building owner Sohel Rana for structural fault found at the nine-story building, constructing the structure with substandard materials and violating the
national building code.
Savar police filed another case against Rana, his father Abdul Khalek, and the owners of five garments housed in the nine-storey building for the loss of lives.
Sheuli Akter, wife of Jahangir Alam, whose body was recovered from the collapsed site, filed the other case against Rana, Bazlus Samad Adnan, owner of New Wave Style, and the chief engineer of Savar Municipality.
Seven, among 21 accused in the cases, have already been out of prison on bail from the High Court while the rest, including Sohel Rana, is now in jail.