Rajuk Assistant Director arrested over FR Tower design fraud case

Anti-corruption Commission arrested Rajdhani Unnayan Kartripakkha (RAJUK) Assistant Director Shah Md Badrul Alam in a fraud case over the design of FR Tower in capital’s Banani. 

ACC Public Relations Officer Pranab Kumar Bhattacharya said an ACC team led by its deputy director Abu Bakar Siddique conducted the drive at his house in Banani and arrested him around 10pm.  

Badrul Alam will be produced before the court on Tuesday, said ACC.  

ACC filed two cases against 23 people for their alleged involvement in illegally extending Banani’s FR Tower beyond the permitted number of floors. 

The building caught fire that left 25 people killed and 73 others injured on March 27. 

ACC found that the 23-storey FR Tower had no fire alarm, narrow exit points and staircases, blocked fire exits and other issues. 

The authorities had legally obtained permission for a 15-storey building but they made the FR Tower a 23-storey building over time. As a result, the casualties peaked.

The ACC sued 20 and five people respectively in two cases filed over illegal extension of FR Tower from 16th to 18th and 19th to 23rd floors. 

Some of the accused are SMHI Faruque, owner of the land on which FR Tower is built; Liakat Ali Khan Mukul, chairman of Rupayan Housing Estate Ltd, the housing company that extended the building illegally; Tasvirul Islam, one of the owners of FR Tower; Muhammd Shawkat Ali, member of Bangladesh Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (BCSIR); Syed Nazmul Huda, sub-divisional engineer of Public Works Department (PWD); and Shamsur Rahman, executive engineer of PWD.