Dhaka: Tarique Rahman, son of Bangladesh's detained former premier Khaleda Zia, and an ex-minister have been formally charged with taking Rs 12.6-crore bribe for an alleged cover up in a sensational murder case.

Bangladesh's powerful Anti-Corruption Commission charged Rahman, who was detained a year ago, Lutfuzzaman Babr and six others with "misappropriating their power and causing obstacles to the investigation" into the 2006 killing of Bashundhara Business Group director Humayun Kabir Sabbir.

The accused allegedly accepted Taka 21 crore as bribes from the company chairman Ahmed Akbar Sobhan to drop the name of his son Shafiat Sobhan Sanvir who allegedly killed Sabbir from the case.

Babar, a former state minister for home, was earlier jailed for 17 years for illegal possession of weapons but this is the first chargesheet against him in a graft case since his arrest in May last year.

The ACC alleged yesterday that Zia's elder son Rahman, also the senior joint secretary general of her Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP), was a mastermind of the deal.

Rahman, who is in late 40s, was detained on March 8, 2007 by the military-backed interim government under its massive anti-corruption drive. He faces 10 criminal and graft cases and this was the third charge sheet filed against him.

The move came a day after the powerful ACC pressed charges against her detained mother Zia, who was arrested in September last year, for taking bribes in contracting out several gas fields to a foreign oil company.
Source : PTI