Yunus sentenced to six months' jail in labour law violation case
Three other top Grameen Telecom officials handed same sentence; all four granted one-month bail
Nobel Laureate Prof Muhammad Yunus and three other top officials of Grameen Telecom were sentenced to six months' imprisonment in a labour law violation case today.
Sheikh Merina Sultana, chairman of the Third Labour Court of Dhaka, delivered the verdict.
After the verdict, Yunus and the three other officials filed separate bail petitions, and the judge granted them bail for a month.
Prof Yunus is the chairman of Grameen Telecom, while the others sentenced -- Ashraful Hassan, Nurjahan Begum and Mohammad Shahjahan -- are top officials.
They appeared at the courtroom at 1:42pm.
The four were fined Tk 30,000 each, in default of which they would have to serve 25 more days in jail.
After the verdict, Yunus's lawyer Abdullah-Al-Mamun told reporters that they would appeal against the judgement.
On December 24, the court set today for delivery of the verdict.
On June 6, it framed charges against them. It also recorded statements of four prosecution witnesses in the case.
On September 9, 2021, Labour Inspector (General) SM Arifuzzaman of the Inspection for Factories and Establishments Department filed the case with the court.
According to the case documents, IFED officials on August 16, 2021, inspected the office of Grameen Telecom in the capital's Mirpur and found several violations of labour laws.
On August 19 that year, the department sent a letter to the authorities of Grameen Telecom, mentioning that 67 of its employees were supposed to be made permanent employees. But it was not done, the case statement said.
Besides, the employees' participation and welfare funds were yet to be formed, and five percent of the company's dividends supposed to be paid to the workers were not paid, it added.