DHAKA, May 15: A Dhaka court on Thursday issued warrants for the arrest of six former ministers and six others shown fugitives in the GATCO scam case.

The police, however, did not take any steps to arrest the six former ministers till submission of this report saying that they were yet to get the copies of the warrants.

Court officials said that they had sent the copies to the police stations — Gulshan, Ramna and New Market. The officers-in-charge of the police stations, however, said they did not get the copies till 8pm.

Earlier, The Anti-Corruption Commission on Tuesday pressed charges against the 24 in the GATCO scam case. The investigation officer, Mohammad Zahirul Huda, also a deputy director of the commission, filed the charge sheet, seeking warrant for the arrest of the 12 fugitive accused.

Charges were pressed against the 24 persons including former prime minister Khaleda Zia, for the award of a contract to an incompetent and unfit firm, Global Agro Trade Company, to handle containers at the Inland Container Depot in Dhaka and at Chittagong port allegedly for kickbacks causing a loss of more than Tk 145.6 million to the state exchequer.

Metropolitan sessions judge M Azizul Haque also ordered the jail authorities to produce 12 detained accused in the case, including Khaleda Zia, also the Bangladesh Nationalist Party chairperson, and her youngest son Arafat Rahman, in the court on May 22.

The court also ordered the police to report by May 22 the execution of the warrants against former finance minister M Saifur Rahman, former LGRD and cooperatives minister Abdul Mannan Bhuiyan, also the expelled BNP secretary general, former agriculture minister MK Anwar, former information minister M Shamsul Islam, former industries minister Matiur Rahman Nizami, also the Jamaat-e-Islami amir, and former state minister for commerce Amir Khasru Mahmud Chowdhury.Immediately after the issuance of the warrants, two former ministers, Shamsul Islam and MK Anwar, went to the Supreme Court and filed petitions seeking anticipatory bail in the case.

Their counsel Ruhul Quddus Kajol tried to get the petition heard on Thursday by a division bench of the High Court. But the bench refused to entertain the petitions saying no bail petition could be heard even by the High Court in a case under the Emergency Powers Rules in accordance with the Appellate Division’s recent judgment.

The counsel then approached another bench of the high court, which asked him to move the cases on Sunday saying that no such petitions could be moved on Thursday.

Besides the six former ministers, warrants were also issued for the arrest of former shipping secretary Zulfikar Haider Chowdhury, former Chittagong

Port Authority engineer AKM Rashid Uddin Ahmed, and GATCO director Shahjahan M Hasib, former shipping minister Akbar Hossain’s wife Jahanara Akbar, his son’s friend Ehsan Yusuf and Global Agro Trade director AKM Musa Kajal.

Besides Khaleda and Arafat, 10 others, now facing charges in the case, are in jail. They are: former health minister Khandker Mosharraf Hossain, former state minister for energy AKM Mosharraf Hossain, former Chittagong Port Authority chairmen Zulfiquar Ali and AMM Shahadat Hossain, former CPA director (transport) MA Sanwar Hossain, its chief accounts officer Ahmed Abul Kashem, former CPA member Lutful Kabir, Global Agro Trade directors Syed Galib Ahmed and Syed Tanvir Ahmed, former shipping minister Akbar Hossain’s son Ismail Hossain.