The Labour and Employment Ministry has rejected a police request for allowing its three officials to be named in the charge sheet in a murder case filed over the deadly Rana Plaza collapse. Though the charge sheet was pressed four months back, trial proceedings in the case could not be started due to delay in securing approval of the Labour Ministry. The Criminal Investigation Department submitted two charge sheets on June 1 – against 42 people, including building owner Sohel Rana and 13 government officials, in the case filed under the Penal Code and against 17, including seven public servants, in the other case filed under the Building Construction Act. Before pressing the charges, CID Assistant Superintendent Bijoy Krishna Kar, also investigator of the cases, sent letters to the relevant ministries seeking clearance about the 20 government officials to include them in the charge sheets and got clearance about 16 accused. Despite this, he named the four officials in the charge sheet in the case filed under the Penal Code. Recently, the Public Works Ministry approved the inclusion of one of its officials in the charge sheet. But the Labour Ministry has denied police permission to press charges against factory inspectors Md Yusuf Ali and Md Shahidul Islam, and Deputy Inspector Md Jamshadur Rahman. In a letter sent to the Dhaka’s Chief Judicial Magistrate Court on November 2, the ministry said that the three officials were clean. They had not violated any of the provisions of the Labour Law and the Factories Act while issuing licences for the factories housed in Rana Plaza and the renewal process. However, the IO told the Dhaka Tribune recently that they had got evidence of their involvement in the incident during the investigation. Signed by Senior Assistant Secretary Shahin Akhtar, the letter also said: “It is not fair to include the three officials in the criminal case filed over the Rana Plaza tragedy. So the ministry did not give clearance report for submitting the charge sheet against the officials.” Prosecution produced the report before the court of Dhaka’s Senior Judicial Magistrate Al-Amin on November 8. The court fixed November 30 for passing an order on the matter. On the other hand, the court recently got clearance report of accused Md Awlad Hossain, who is serving as a building inspector under the Housing and Public Works Ministry. According to the charge sheets, murder charges have been brought against 41, including Sohel Rana, factory owners and elected representatives, as they deliberately threw the workers into a death trap. The eight-storey plaza that housed five garment factories and a shopping complex at Savar collapsed on April 24, 2013 killing over 1,135 people and injuring several thousand others.
