A Bangladeshi court on Sunday dismissed a lawsuit against leaders of the national chapter of Transparency International (TI) based on a technicality, hours after it issued an arrest warrant accusing them of tarnishing the judiciary's reputation. The rejection order issued by a magistrate in the central Comilla district said that the defendants' addresses had not been properly listed in the complaint, a public prosecutor told reporters.
The earlier warrant had targeted the TI chapter's chairman, M Hafizuddin Khan, its executive director, Iftekharuzzaman, and a senior research fellow, Md Wahid Alam, a court official said. The Berlin-based corruption watchdog last week released a report claiming that 84 per cent of Bangladeshi households were victims of corruption at the hands of government officials and private businesses.
A district court lawyer had lodged a libel suit against the trio, claiming the report tarnished the image of the judiciary and lawyers. Two separate defamation cases against the watchdog employees were also filed in the south-eastern port city of Chittagong. TI's report, which was based on the surveys of 6,000 households between June 2009 and May 2010, claimed that the judiciary topped the list for perceived corruption among 13 service sectors. A government minister had earlier slammed the report, saying that it was a conspiracy against the country's judiciary.-PR
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