DHAKA, Nov 27: A group of BNP-affiliated lawyers today hurled eggs at the presiding judge of a High Court bench in Dhaka, and forced him to leave the courtroom in the midst of conducting judicial functions, for allegedly making “adverse comments about late president Ziaur Rahman in a verdict”.
The incident occurred while the bench of Justice Md Ashraful Kamal and Justice Kazi Waliul Islam was hearing and disposing of cases at the High Court building on the Supreme Court premises after lunch hours, Daily Star reported.
Around 2:30pm, a group of lawyers entered the courtroom and told Justice Ashraful Kamal that he has no right to hold the office of a judge anymore as he had made adverse comments about the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) founder in a judgement, an official at the HC bench told Daily Star requesting anonymity.
He said the lawyers also told the justice that they had tolerated him for several years.
At one stage, a few of those lawyers threw eggs at the justice, however, the eggs missed the target and hit the calendar hung on a piece of wooden furniture in the courtroom.
Both the judges of the HC bench then left the courtroom without saying anything to the protesting lawyers.
Justice Md Ashraful Kamal was appointed as an additional judge of the HC on December 12, 2010, for two years and his service was confirmed on December 10, 2012, during the regime of Sheikh Hasina-led government.
After today’s incident, the judges of the HC did not take part in courtroom proceedings.
An official at the SC registry office told The Daily Star that the authorities concerned in the SC have been conveyed about the incident.
Meanwhile, Advocate Mohammad Mahbubur Rahman Khan, a pro-BNP lawyer and former assistant secretary of the Supreme Court Bar Association, told The Daily Star that Justice Ashraful Kamal has made adverse comments about late president Ziaur Rahman in a verdict in the ‘Asaduzzaman Vs Bangladesh’ case in 2016 while he was a junior judge of an HC bench.
In the verdict, Justice Ashraful Kamal observed that Major General Ziaur Rahman was not only part of the collaborators of the killers of Sheikh Mujibur Rahman (the founder of Bangladesh and father of ex-PM Sheikh Hasina) and his family but also the killers of the four national leaders.
“Rather, he [Ziaur Rahman] rewarded the murderers of the father of the nation and his family by making them ambassadors, parliamentarians, etc”.
“What he (Ziaur Rahman) did more heinously is that he formulated the Indemnity Act, stopping the trial of the murderers of the people’s elected president, the Father of the Nation and his family”.
“[Ziaur Rahman] completely illegally and unconstitutionally seized the office of President, which can be said in a word, seized the people’s institutions at gunpoint”, Justice Ashraful said in the verdict.
Ziaur Rahman served as president of Bangladesh from 1977 to 1981. Zia was promoted to the rank of colonel in 1972 in the newly independent country. He came to political prominence following the August 1975 military coup in which Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, the country’s first leader, was assassinated,
Advocate Mahbubur Rahman Khan also said some general lawyers also confined High Court Division’s Registrar Munshi Moshiur Rahman in his office for some time this afternoon and removed his nameplate from his office as he was one of the behind-the-scenes craftsmen of the attempted judicial coup on August 10 and a friend of the “fascist” former Sheikh Hasina government.
In line with demands from certain quarters, 12 HC judges have been kept away from judicial proceedings since October 20.
Earlier on August 10, the then chief justice Obaidul Hassan and five other judges of the Appellate Division of the SC stepped down amid the “students’ protest” demanding their resignations following the fall of Hasina-led government on August 5.
(UNI)
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