The highest court has stayed for four weeks a High Court order that no person may be shown as arrested, arrested or otherwise harassed in the absence of a specific case against them. The court has at the same time directed that the rule issued by the High Court on the matter be disposed of within the next four weeks.
The four-member Appellate Division bench headed by the chief justice, Zubayer Rahman Chowdhury, issued the order on Wednesday on 14 separate applications filed by the state.
In several instances a person granted bail by a court has been shown as arrested in a case in which they are not named in the first information report, before being released from jail. Such incidents were seen in the cases of the former Narayanganj mayor Selina Hayat Ivy and the former chief justice ABM Khairul Haque. Against that background, 15 separate writ petitions were filed in the High Court on behalf of leaders and workers of the Awami League, whose activities are banned, who are in jail or in custody, including the former chief justice ABM Khairul Haque’s son Ashiq Ul Haque.
The High Court issued separate orders along with a rule on those writ petitions. The respondents were directed not to show the petitioners as arrested, not to arrest them and not to harass them in the absence of a specific case. The rule also asked why repeatedly showing a petitioner as arrested and implicating them purely to harass and humiliate them should not be declared to be without lawful authority. The state filed 15 separate applications seeking a stay of these High Court orders, issued at various times. Of them the Appellate Division has disposed of 14. One application will be heard on Sunday.
The attorney general, Barrister Md Ruhul Quddus Kajal, appeared for the state in court on Wednesday. He later told reporters that the High Court order carried a risk of obstructing independent investigation by investigating agencies. If such a rule stood, he said, law enforcement would have no scope to act against anyone even where it had specific evidence against them.
He said the Appellate Division had stayed the High Court order. That means, he said, that if an investigating officer finds in the course of an investigation that a person is connected with a criminal allegation, the officer may certainly apply to show that person as arrested even if the person is not named in the first information report.
The senior advocate Barrister Sara Hossain and the advocate Motahar Hossain Saju, Barrister Mustafizur Rahman Khan and the lawyer AKM Fakhrul Islam, among others, appeared for the writ petitioners in court.
বাংলায় মূল প্রতিবেদন পড়ুন · Read the original Bengali report