A High Court Division Bench of the Supreme Court of Bangladesh yesterday delivered unusual split orders regarding bail prayer of 18 fugitive convicts.
Presiding judge Syed A B Mahmudul Huq in his order kept
the bail petitions pending and directed the convicts to surrender within eight
weeks to the Metropolitan Senior Special Judge's Court. The senior judge of the
bench asked the convicts to come before the bench after obtaining papers of
surrender from the court concerned.
On the other hand, junior judge
of the bench Moyeenul Islam Chowdhury in his order disposed of the bail
petitions of the convicts and directed them to surrender to the designated
lower court within eight weeks and, if necessary, to come to the bench after
exhausting the regular trial court process.
An eminent lawyer said, the core
point of difference between the two orders are that the presiding judge's one
asked the convicts to come before the bench after obtaining papers of surrender
from the trial court, the implied meaning of which is that the court below
shall allow them to do so.
The order of the other member of
the bench did not dispute with the enlargement of eight weeks but ordered the
convicts to come before the High Court bench after exhausting the regular trial
court process, meaning the court below shall take its own course of action and
may not necessarily allow them to be at large after eight weeks and go to the
higher court themselves. In that case they could come to the court through
their Counsels as convicted appellants.
Senior and well-experienced
lawyers, with the request for not mentioning their names, said the honourable
High Court Division of the Supreme Court, over last some years, has been taking
much load of bail prayers and has been awarding it which may, over time,
incapacitate our lower judiciary and inadvertently affect the process of law
and process of court.
They expressed the hope that the
honorable High Court Division shall now not rethink the matter and may
gradually squeeze the practice.