The High Court on Tuesday summoned three lawyers, including the president of the Khulna District Bar Association, to appear before it on November 22 and face charges amounting to contempt of court, in relation to their alleged misconduct with a judge.
An HC bench of Justice J. B. M. Hassan and Justice Razik-Al-Jalil passed the order, with the contempt attached to a suo moto rule following a hearing in this regard.
The rule questioned why any punitive action taken against the trio, stemming from their own actions, wouldn’t be illegal.
Those summoned were the bar’s president for Khulna district Saiful Islam, and KDBA members Sheikh Nazmul Hossain and Sheikh Ashraf Ali Pappu.
Attorney AM Amin Uddin and Deputy Attorney General Tushar Kanti Roy stood for the state in the hearing.
The state lawyers said the HC asked the accused lawyers to appear before it in person on November 22 and explain their actions in view of the contempt rule.
According to the file of Registrar General, on September 22 lawyer Pappu, who stood for a plaintiff in a case in Khulna, left the court of Khulna’s former Land Survey Tribunal Judge Nirmalendu Das, who is now an additional district judge of Chapainawabganj district, saying the bar president would interrogate the case after the court fixed a date for delivering the judgment.
Though Pappu orally placed a petition seeking time for hearing the case, the court rejected it.
Later, the three accused lawyers, along with others, entered the court again and created chaos while the judge was hearing another case.
Saiful, the senior among them, asked the judge with a rude attitude why he rejected the time petition sought for the hearing of the case and threw him some other questions.
Remarkably, the judge continued to engage with the trio and said: “You (the bar president) applied for time but I rejected it. You see the reason behind the rejection in the order. It is unacceptable that you seek the reason in this manner.”
If you’re thinking that was the worst of it, think again.
“We don’t want any answers from you, knowing you deliver illegal judgments for money and bribe. We will boycott the court and prove before the media that you are corrupted,” the lawyers shot back.
Later, the judge sent a written letter to the chief justice mentioning the issue on the same day. The registrar general of the HC submitted it before the chief judge.
The HC bench on Tuesday passed the order on a suo moto rule, after the chief justice formed a bench headed by Justice J. B. M. Hassan to hear the issue on October 25.
Source: United News of Bangladesh