The New Nation - Internet Edition

Bdnews24.com, Dhaka

Allegations of graft and illegal land grabbing were brought against deputy speaker and four-party candidate for Naogaon-3 Akhter Hamid Siddiqui and his family, by a former security aide yesterday.

"During his tenure as deputy speaker Siddiqui received bribes from people promising to give them jobs and illegally grabbed 150 bighas or nearly 50 acres of farm lands," Siddiqui's former gunman SM Zulfiqar Rahman alleged.

Rahman gave an account of his former boss's alleged misdeeds at a press yesterday, including getting him "sacked from the Special Branch".

"The deputy speaker exerted his personal influence to get me sacked from the SB after I protested against his illegal activities and his musclemen have been threatening to kill me since," Rahman claimed.

While working as Siddiqui's official gunman from Oct 2001 to Oct 2004, Rahman said he witnessed Akhter Hamid Siddiqui, his wife Nasrin Siddiqui and son Pervez Arefin Siddiqui "pocketing bribes in exchange for promises of employment."

He also alleged that the deputy speaker and his family illegally grabbed some 150 bighas of land for farming, initially buying a small plot and forcefully grabbing the rest.

Two of Siddiqui's alleged victims - Shahadat Alam, a farmer from Manikganj, and Kazi Ferdous, a Jubodal leader from Naogaon - also described their version of the "ordeal" to reporters at the National Press Club.

They sought the chief adviser's intervention in recovering "the money and land grabbed by the Siddiqui and his family".