Khairul Haque granted bail in two more cases, no bar to release
Former Chief Justice ABM Khairul Haque has secured interim bail in two separate murder cases filed with Dhaka’s Jatrabari and Adabar police stations over incidents during the July mass uprising.
The High Court bench comprising Justice KM Zahid Sarwar and Justice Sheikh Abu Taher granted the bail along with a rule today, Tuesday, following hearings on petitions filed by Khairul Haque.
Earlier, on 28 April, the Appellate Division upheld Khairul Haque’s bail in five separate cases, including the murder of a Jubo Dal activist in Jatrabari during the July uprising.
Following today’s bail orders in the two additional cases, there is currently no legal bar to Khairul Haque’s release from prison, his senior lawyer, Md Mansurul Haque Chowdhury, told Prothom Alo. He said, “Khairul Haque’s name does not appear in the FIR of one of the two cases. After obtaining bail in the five cases, he was shown arrested in these two cases. After hearing the matter, the High Court issued a rule and granted him six months’ interim bail.”
According to lawyers concerned with the cases, after obtaining High Court bail in the five cases, Khairul Haque was shown arrested on 30 March in two separate murder cases filed with Jatrabari and Adabar police stations in the capital.
After failing to secure bail in the lower courts in these two cases, Khairul Haque filed separate bail petitions before the High Court last Sunday. The petitions were listed for hearing today.
Senior lawyers Md Mansurul Haque Chowdhury, Motahar Hossain Saju, Sayeed Ahmed Raza, and lawyers Jahangir Hossain and Monayem Nabi Shaheen, among others, represented Khairul Haque in court.
The state was represented by Additional Attorney General Muhammad Abdul Jabbar Bhuiyan, Deputy Attorney General Syeda Sazia Sharmin, and Assistant Attorney General Md Emdadul Hanif.
Khairul Haque served as Chief Justice from 30 September 2010, to 17 May 2011. On 10 May 2011, an Appellate Division bench led by him delivered the verdict scrapping the Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution.
Police arrested Justice Khairul Haque from his residence in Dhanmondi on 24 July last year. He was later shown arrested in a case over the killing of Jubo Dal activist Abdul Kaiyum Ahad in Jatrabari during the July mass uprising. He has remained in prison since then.
On 27 August last year, Supreme Court lawyer Mujahidul Islam Shaheen filed a case against Khairul Haque with Shahbagh Police Station, accusing him of forging the verdict related to the caretaker government system. Another case on the same allegation was filed on 25 August last year with Bandar Police Station in Narayanganj by one Nurul Islam Molla. In addition, the Anti-Corruption Commission filed a case against Khairul Haque in August last year over allegations of unlawfully accepting a plot allocation.
Among those five cases, the High Court granted Khairul Haque bail on 8 March in four separate cases, including the Jatrabari murder case and cases over alleged forgery of the caretaker government verdict. He secured bail from the High Court in the ACC case on 11 March.
The state subsequently filed separate petitions seeking a stay on the High Court’s bail orders. Those petitions were placed before the chamber court of the Appellate Division on 8 April, when the court referred them to the Appellate Division’s regular bench for hearing.
Following hearings, the Appellate Division on 28 April dismissed the state’s separate petitions seeking leave to appeal. As a result, Khairul Haque’s bail in the five separate cases, including the Jatrabari murder case during the July uprising, remains in effect.