The High Court on Tuesday directed the authorities to investigate and find out whether the Mercantile Bank Foundation had destroyed a temple to build a charitable hospital at Dubol Hati Rajbari in the district.
A bench of Justice AHM Shamsuddin Chowdhury and Justice Gobinda Chandra Tagore also directed the deputy commissioner of Naogaon and the director general of the Department of Archaeology to find out the real owner of the land.
The bench issued the order responding to the argument of former law minister Abdul Matin Khasru, the lawyer of the bank, owned by Abdul Jalil, former general secretary of ruling Awami League that no temple existed on the land on which the hospital was being built by his clients.
On July 27, the bench had issued a rule suo moto taking cognisance to a newspaper report under the headline that a hospital was being built by demolishing a centuries old temple, and directed the authorities to explain why appropriate and stern action should not be taken against the management of the bank.
The court had also directed the Mercantile Bank chairman Abdul Jalil and its board of directors to appear before it on August 16 to explain their position on the issue.
Khasru told the court that Jalil could not appear before it as he was sick.
The directors of the bank's board were appeared for the hearing.
Khasru told the bench that Jalil had purchased the land where no temple existed.
He also submitted that the plot of land was never listed by local experts as a heritage site hosting a temple.
He, however, said that once there was a theatre there.
'A person like Jalil cannot grab temple land as he is the leader of a secular political party,' he said.
But Khasru could give no satisfactory answer when the photographs of the temple' was submitted to the court.
Earlier, lawyer Sheikh Fazle Nur Taposh, MP, who defended the bank's managing director AKM Shahidul Haque, told the court that the bank had no knowledge about the plot of land on which the hospital was being built.
To a query from the court why the bank had allotted Tk 50, 00,000 for the constructing the hospital, Taposh said that the Mercantile Bank Foundation asked for the money to build the hospital in Noagaon as per the wish of Jalil.
'But the bank is unaware whether the hospital was being build on temple land,' he added.
The court exempted Shahidul from appearance at the next hearing.
The court, however, asked the other officials of the bank to appear before it again at the next hearing.
Source : New Age
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