The political detention of former Chief Justice Khairul Huq

The continuing imprisonment of Bangladesh’s former Chief Justice, Khairul Huq, stands as one of the darkest stains on the country’s post-Hasina criminal justice system. It reflects the same politicisation of law enforcement and the judiciary that, under the previous Awami League government, entrenched authoritarian rule and eroded public faith in the rule of law.

The individuals now in power — many of whom were once vocal critics of that very system — are either actively perpetuating the same abuses or turning a blind eye to them. The corrupt machinery they once denounced is now being wielded for their own political advantage.

In 2017, the Awami League government forced then Chief Justice Surendra Kumar Sinha to resign and flee the country after he ruled against it in a landmark constitutional case. As part of that pressure campaign, the Directorate General of Forces Intelligence (DGFI) secretly detained one of his associates, threatening to disappear him if Sinha did not comply.

While the current government has not yet resorted to such extremes, it has gone further in another way — by imprisoning a former Chief Justice on fabricated or tendentious criminal charges. Even the Awami League, at the height of its repression, never crossed that line.

Let there be no doubt that during the Awami League’s authoritarian years, serious crimes - extrajudicial killings, disappearances and systematic corruption – were committed. And where there is credible substantive evidence, the perpetrators should where possible be brought to justice.

Indeed, some of those now detained in Bangladesh’s prisons do appear to face well founded charges, including most of those currently under trial at the International Crimes Tribunal for alleged crimes against humanity tied to the July–August killings and enforced disappearances.

But tainting whatever genuine investigations and prosecutions are now under way is a surge of transparently politicised detentions, which may very well far outnumber the evidence-based ones. The arrest of Khairul Huq, by virtue of his position as a former chief justice, is a clear manifestation of this new cycle of judicial vengeance.

On 24 July 2025, Khairul Huq was arrested from his home and remanded in prison the next day in connection with a murder case naming him and 486 others in the killing of Abul Qayyum Ahad at Jatrabari in Dhaka on 18 July 2024.

Although Huq’s name appears in the First Information Report (FIR), filed several days earlier, the document contains no explanation or evidence linking him to the crime. None has been presented since.

At the Dhaka Magistrate’s Court on 25 July, the political nature of the detention was explicitly acknowledged. Representing the complainant, Khorshed Alam, President of the Dhaka Bar Unit of the BNP Lawyers’ Forum, told the court, “Former Chief Justice Khairul Haque was the chief architect of turning Sheikh Hasina into a fascist. … He’s a stain on the judiciary and has acted no differently than an Awami League party activist.”

Alam made no attempt to ground his remarks in law. His argument was wholly political — including that since Hasina’s government had killed unarmed protesters, Huq should also be charged in each of those murders. “We think, during the student-people uprising, fascist Sheikh Hasina’s law enforcement agencies and her goons shot dead unarmed students and civilians. She is facing murder charges for these killings. We think Khairul Haque should also be made an accused in each one.”

In seeking an order of remand into prison, the investigation officer also focused on Haque’s “repeated breaches of trust”, “forgery” and “acts of sedition”, all allegations irrelevant to the murder case for which he was arrested.

Huq made no bail application that day; according to his family, Bangladesh Nationalist Party affiliated lawyers prevented him from appointing counsel.
A week later, Haque did get his chance to apply for bail. In his written application, he argued that the logs of the security police guarding him the day showed that he had never travelled near Jatrabari, the site of the killing, and only left his residence once that day to go to the Law Commission’s office. The court nonetheless rejected his plea.

Huq’s lawyers then petitioned the High Court to quash the case, arguing that the allegations were “false, concocted, and preposterous,” fabricated solely “to humiliate him” and amounting to “an abuse of process.”

The hearing, scheduled for 10 August, was adjourned at the request of the Attorney General’s lawyer. When it resumed the next day, shortly after 3pm, one of the former Chief Justice’s lawyers MK Rahman, stood up and started making arguments to the judges.

A senior lawyer from the Attorney General’s office however then came into the court and asked the judges to delay the case for a week so that the Attorney General could be present. This intervention resulted in a heated arguments and scuffles in court between the two sets of lawyers, with the High Court judges in the end accepting the Attorney General’s request.

Any delay was entirely unnecessary. Any independent lawyer reviewing the FIR and the total lack of evidence to support the arrest of the former Chief Justice, would have recognised the allegation and his detention were baseless – and recognise that in the interests of justice the case should have been quashed. The Attorney General office’s request to prolong proceedings appears to have been politically motivated, intended to prolong Huq’s unevidenced and unlawful detention.

Then, in what appeared to have been an act of judicial intimidation, a new FIR was suddenly filed on 13 August at Shahbagh Police Station. It accused Huq’s lead counsel MK Rahman and another co-counsel of involvement in unrest during the 2023 Supreme Court Bar Association elections — despite the original case from that time making no mention of them.

This appears to have been a retaliatory act, designed to pressure Huq’s defence team.

It was not however the only act of intimidation involving the Chief Justice’s case. On 7 August, a few days before the quashing hearing, the Dhaka Tribune published an article by the lawyer Kollol Kibria critical of the former Chief Justice’s arrest. “Judicial decisions no matter how controversial are not crimes. If there is genuine misconduct, it should be dealt with transparently, backed by evidence, and guided by due process. But when political vengeance is repackaged as a murder charge, it isn’t justice, it is retribution masquerading as law.” he wrote.

On 11 August, a day after the High Court hearing, Kibria was attacked outside his legal chambers in down-town Dhaka, by several men who said he was “an agent of the last regime” and warned him about his writing.

When the High Court hearing finally resumed after a week, Huq’s lawyers, in the politically intimidatory environment, sought a two-month adjournment.

At the end of July 2025, a week after Huq’s initial arrest, the former Chief Justice was shown arrested in a second case concerning appellate division orders, given in 2011 and 2012 whilst he was Chief Justice, which had ruled that the caretaker government system was unconstitutional. This legal ruling, which resulted in the Awami League government removing the caretaker government provisions from the constitution, allowed the party to remain in power though a further three election cycles without holding a free and fair vote.

Since judges cannot be prosecuted for their rulings, this new criminal case focused on a discrepancy between the Appellate Division’s short legal order given in May 2011 and the full judgment published in September 2012

The short order had stated that while the caretaker government provision was unconstitutional, the next two elections “could” still be held under the existing system — language which was absent from the later full judgment.

The FIR claims that in omitting these words Huq had committed the Penal Code offences of “forgery” and “cheating” as well as the offence under section 219 of the penal code of  “corruptly or maliciously” giving an order “which he knows to be contrary to law”.

The allegations of “forgery” or “cheating” are patently absurd, offences that clearly do not apply to these particular facts. Moreover, the FIR fails to mention that by the time the full judgment was published, the government had already amended the Constitution, rendering the omitted line legally irrelevant — in judicial terms, “infructuous.” There is therefore, arguably, no basis to claim the omission was “contrary to law,” let alone that Huq acted with “corrupt or malicious intent” as required by section 219 in the Penal Code.

Even if prosecutors genuinely believed otherwise, there was no justification for remanding Huq in custody. He is not a flight risk, and his detention serves no investigative purpose. It is punishment before conviction — pure political retribution. Indeed, exacerbating the injustice, he has also been shown arrested and detained in two other identical cases lodged in different parts of the country.

In September, Huq has also been shown arrested in a third case, this time filed by the Anti-Corruption Commission. This FIR centres around the legality of an allotment by RAJUK of a plot of land in Purbachal, and an alleged failure by Huq to pay 4.7 lakh taka in interest payments. The allegations are technical and complicated, and Huq’s family categorically denies the claim and has prepared a detailed rebuttal.

It is telling that before filing the case and arresting Khairul Huq, the ACC never interviewed Huq to obtain his side of the story suggesting that the case was merely a pretext to prolong his detention. Even assuming some of ACC’s allegations could be proven (highly contested by Huq’s family), it is difficult to see any justification for holding the former Chief Justice in pre-trial detention, particularly when one of the central claims revolves around a disputed 4.7 lakh taka interest payment, a matter more appropriate for a civil court.

The continuing detention of Khairul Huq is a textbook case of politicised detention, the very practice that many of the current “ministers”, their newly appointed officials, as well as leaders of the BNP and Jamaat once condemned so vocally before 5 August 2025.

Now the tables have turned: they preside over a system that perpetuates the same abuses which are at the heart of Bangladesh’s repressive state. Not only have they failed to take steps to end these injustices; many have become complicit in sustaining them.

It is deeply ironic that amid all the current rhetoric of “reform” surrounding the July Charter — with Muhammad Yunus even declaring it could mark, if implemented, a transition from “barbarism to civilisation” — neither the government nor the political parties that endorsed the Charter have shown the slightest interest in addressing, let alone halting, the ongoing wave of arbitrary detentions taking place right before their eyes.

* David Bergman has written about Bangladesh for many years. He can be contacted on X at @TheDavidBergman

* The views expressed are the author’s own.