Shawdesh Desk:

Surendra Kumar Sinha, the former chief justice of Bangladesh, has reportedly sought political asylum in Canada.

He entered Canada at Fort Erie on July 4 and filed a refugee claim, reports Canadian online news portal The Star.

The former chief justice has been living abroad since November 2017. He has mostly stayed in the United States.

In early July, the Anti-Corruption Commission in Bangladesh accused Sinha and 10 others of accumulating illegal wealth and laundering Tk 4 crore. He denies the charges.

In an interview with The Star, he claimed that he was being targeted because he was ‘an activist judge’.

‘I delivered judgments  that provoked bureaucrats, the establishment, politicians and even terrorists,’ he told the news portal. ‘I’m the enemy of the country, the persona non grata.’

Sinha, Bangladesh’s first non-Muslim chief justice, went on leave on October 2, 2017, and left for Australia on October 13.

The government claimed that he was going on leave on health grounds but just before his departure, he told reporters that he was not sick.

A day after his trip to Australia, the Supreme Court in a statement said Sinha was facing 11 charges, including graft, moral turpitude and money laundering.

He resigned from his post on November 11, 2017, nearly three months before the completion of his tenure.

Mizanur Rahman, Bangladesh’s high commissioner to Canada, told The Star that Sinha had been making ‘inaccurate statements about the government’ since he left Bangladesh.

‘He’s absolutely under no threat to return to the country,’ Mizanur said. ‘He’s making these statements just to strengthen his refugee claim.’