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Ragib Ali, son sentenced to 14-year imprisonment for fraud

A Sylhet court today sentenced controversial businessman Ragib Ali and his son Abdul Hye to 14-year rigorous imprisonment each for making forgery of land ministry documents to grab land of Tarapur Tea Estate."Sylhet Chief Metropolitan Magistrate Saifuzzaman Hiru passed the order at 3 pm at the crowded courtroom," public prosecutor Misbah Uddin Siraj told the news agency.The court on December 14, 2016, started recording depositions of the witnesses in the case. A total of 11 witnesses testified before the court.According to the case documents, Ragib forced caretaker Pankaj Kumar Gupta of that endowed property to migrate to India and put another man in charge of looking after the 422.96 acres of land. Ragib and his men later forged documents of the Ministry of Land and take the land on Hye`s name on lease for 99-year.The apex court on January 19, 2016, declared the possession of Ragib Ali over the estate illegal and ordered the government to hand over it to Gupta. The court also ordered to remove all the infrastructures build by Ragib on that land within six months.As the court issued arrest warrant on August 10, 2016, against Ragib, Hye and four other in two cases filed over the incident, the so called philanthropist fled to India along with all the members of his family.Immigration police detained Hye on November 12, as he was trying to enter Bangladesh from India, while Ragib was arrested by Indian police on November 24 and was later handed over to Bangladesh.Source: BSS