A Dhaka Court on Wednesday sentenced fugitive sacked army officer Lt Col Shahid Uddin Khan and his wife Farzana Anjum Khan to 10 years in prison in a case filed under Special Powers Act.
Additional Metropolitan Sessions Judge Syeda Hafsa Jhuma handed down the verdict.
The court also issued an arrest warrant against them and imposed a fine of Tk 50,000, in default, to serve six months more in jail.
However the court also acquitted Khorshed Alam Patwari and Syed Akidul Ali.
According to the prosecution, two pistols, six bullets, two shotguns, and fake notes worth Tk 3 lakh were recovered from Shahid Uddin Khan’s house located at Cantonment of the capital on January 15, 2019.
On January 15 in 2019, a case was lodged against them.
Of the four, Akidul and Khorshed who are now in jail, heard the verdict from the dock while Shahid Uddin and his wife Farhana have been on the run since the beginning of the trial.
A total of 10 prosecution witnesses testified before the court in the case.
Earlier, on November 10,2020, Dhaka Special Tribunal-4 sentenced Shahid Uddin Chowdhury, his wife Farhana Anjum Khan, Syed Akidul Ali and Khorshed Alam Patwary to life term imprisonment in an arms case.
According to the case documents, the Counter Terrorism & Transnational Crime Unit of Dhaka Metropolitan Police raided the couple’s Baridhara DOHS residence on January 15,2019.
They seized two pistols with 11 rounds of bullets, a shotgun and several magazines from there.
Later, Biplob Kishore Shil, an inspector of CTTC, filed a case with Cantonment police station against four accused including the couple under the Special Powers Act 1974.
After investigation the CTTC pressed charges against the accused on April 4, 2019.
Shahid Khan now expatriate in London is reportedly involved in international terror financing. He lives in Wimbledon, southwest London, with his family after buying a multimillion-pound ‘golden visa’ to the UK in 2009. He reportedly donated £20,000 to local British MP Stephen Hammond.
He had alleged involvement with international terrorism and police found detonators, weapons, radical jihadist literature linked to al-Qaeda and fake Bangladeshi currency in his home. Detectives also alleged they have uncovered 54 bank accounts held by Shahid Khan and his immediate family which include ‘suspicious transactions’ with Islamic madrasas that are being ‘strictly monitored by law enforcement agencies for terrorist activities’.
The documents collected by the police also reveal that Khan, who once enjoyed high-level connections in Bangladesh, is suspected of ‘terror financing in the UK’.
More than Tten years ago, Khan bought a tier-one investor visa which allows wealthy people from outside the European Union to live in the UK with their dependants for a maximum of three years, four months, if they invest more than £2m. They can apply to settle after two years if they invest £10m.
One of Shahid Khan’s daughters, Shehtaz, qualified as a barrister in 2017. On her Facebook page, she also often criticizes the Bangladesh government for blocking the Qatari-funded channel Al-Jazeera English from the country.
It is also alleged that Shahid Khan was involved in land fraud activities in Bangladesh over the past 12 years.