Staff Reporter :
A Sylhet court has issued arrest warrants against Bashundhara Group Chairman Ahmed Akbar Sobhan, Managing Director Sayem Sobhan Anvir, and four others in connection with a cheque fraud case involving dishonoured payments to a former journalist.
The arrest warrants were issued on Thursday by Judge Mohammad Harun-or-Rashid of the Sylhet Additional Chief Metropolitan Magistrate’s Court following a hearing on a case filed by journalist Ahmed Noor, a former Sylhet bureau chief of the national daily Kaler Kantho and currently the editor of Sylhet Mirror.
Confirming the development, the plaintiff’s lawyer Emad Ullah Shahidul Islam stated that the court took the decision after the accused failed to comply with previous summons. Alongside the Bashundhara Chairman and MD, the court also issued warrants against Kaler Kantho publisher Moynal Hossain Chowdhury, current editor Hasan Hafiz, former editor and cheque signatory Shahed Muhammad Ali, and former Bangladesh Pratidin editor Naem Nizam.
The newspaper Kaler Kantho has also been named as an institutional defendant in the case.
According to court records, the case was filed on December 5, 2024. The court had earlier summoned the six individuals named in the complaint but received no response, leading to the issuance of the arrest warrants.
As outlined in the case documents, Ahmed Noor served as the Sylhet bureau chief for Kaler Kantho from its founding until September 2021.
He alleges that his Wage Board-mandated benefits were delayed, and while partial payments were made through 10 post-dated cheques, eight cheques amounting to Tk 601,824 were dishonoured.
Despite issuing a legal notice and receiving verbal assurances from the accused’s legal representatives, the issue remained unresolved, prompting Noor to file two cases under the Negotiable Instruments Act.
The arrest warrants issued Thursday stem from the first of those cases.
Further proceedings in the case are expected in the coming weeks.
