Bangladesh News

The law ministry is likely to send this week its opinion to the housing and public works ministry on the abandoned house in the city’s Gulshan area which former law minister Moudud Ahmed has been occupying “illegally” for about three decades.

The housing and public works ministry said the two-storey house on 35 kathas of land on Gulshan-2 Avenue is an abandoned house and so public property.

Staffs of Moudud’s law chamber, however, claimed that the former minister’s brother Monjur Ahmed owns the house and gave Moudud its power of attorney.

A lawyer there even said Monjur had bought the house.

The dispute over the ownership of the house arose following Moudud’s arrest on April 3 last year as the joint forces did not find any document in favour of his ownership.

Sources said the housing and public works ministry sent a letter to the residents of the house last September, asking to explain the basis of occupying it and that the reply could not satisfy the ministry.

The public works ministry had taken control of the abandoned house after the Liberation War and rented it out to Australian agriculturalist Dr Mary D Dawson. It was learnt that she lived there up to 1979.

According to a recent investigation by the joint forces, Moudud occupied the house in 1980 when he was a deputy prime minister in former president Ziaur Rahman’s cabinet.

Moudud and his wife Hasna Moudud started living in the house but no one then questioned how he got it.

A gazette notification dated September 23, 1986 showed that the house was an abandoned property, but no government agency took any initiative to ask Moudud, then an influential minister in HM Ershad’s cabinet, for any explanation.

A high official of the housing ministry said a superintendent engineer and an executive engineer have been asked to collect and submit updated and detailed information about the house.

On receiving the opinion of the law ministry, the housing ministry will issue a letter to the occupants asking them to vacate the house, said a source.

A case regarding the ownership of the house had been pending with the higher court for a long time. The court finally gave a verdict in favour of Monjur in 2004. The piece of land was registered then again.

Moudud had been given the power of attorney by that time, the source added.