The High Court yesterday directed eight directors of two companies to surrender before the trial court concerned in connection with two cases filed for the 1996 share market scam.

The eight people were acquitted by a special tribunal in the case in February 1 on the ground that there was not sufficient evidence against them.

They will have to surrender before the same tribunal in a month after receiving the HC order, said Shafiul Bashar Bhandary, deputy attorney general.

The accused are: MG Azam Chowdhury, Md Shahidullah and Mahbub Ahmed, all directors of Security Consultants; Hemayet Uddin Ahmed, Moshtak Ahmed Sadeq, Syed Mahbub Morshed, Sharif Ataur Rahman and Ahmed Iqbal Hasan, all directors of HMMS Financial Consultancy and Securities.

Yesterday, the HC, however, asked the lower court concerned to consider

bail if the accused pray for it after surrendering in the cases.

The bench of Justice Md Rais Uddin passed the order after admitting two separate appeals filed by the Bangladesh Securities and Exchange Commission against the lower court verdict that acquitted all the eight accused from the share scandal charges fortheir (appeals) hearing.

The HC also called for the records of the cases from the special tribunal.

The BSEC, which had filed two separate cases against the accused in 1997 for manipulating the share market prices in 1996, filed two separate appeals with the HC on March 25 this year against the special tribunal's verdict.

In the appeals, the BSEC said there is sufficient evidence that the accused were involved in influencing the market price illegally involving them in trading shares in the kerb market even though they were not member of the BSEC and the Dhaka Stock Exchange.

"This is treated as manipulation,"

BSEC said in the appeals.

The BSEC prayed to the HC to scrap the tribunal's verdict, according to Bhandary.

The share price index of the DSE reportedly rose as high as 3,648.75 points on November 5, 1996. The following day, it started falling and came down to 462 points in May 1999.

The share prices of listed companies soared abnormally, even by several hundred times, before the crash, which left millions of investors penniless.

After the crash, the then Awami League-led government formed a probe committee on December 26, 1996, headed by Aminul Islam, who was the vice-chancellor of Jahangirnagar University then.

The committee submitted its report to the government on March 27, 1997, identifying a number of companies and some of the country's biggest brokers and influential individuals to be involved in market manipulation.