Bangladesh News

The Supreme Court (SC) yesterday ordered the government to submit an amended Criminal Procedure Code (CrPC) by February 1 to advance separation of the judiciary from the executive.
It also asked the government to correct some ‘erroneous’ provisions in the four rules for judicial services by the same date.

The seven-member full bench of the Appellate Division with Chief Justice Syed JR Mudassir Husain in the chair yesterday passed the order.

The nine government officials, accused of distorting the 12-point SC directive given earlier for the separation, stood with their hands folded and sought the apex court’s forgiveness as the proceedings began at 9:42am. After a while, they were however asked to sit down.

Attorney General (AG) AJ Mohammad Ali said the rules for the judicial services have already been submitted to the court in affidavit.

In reply, the bench said it has detected some errors in the rules and those need to be corrected.

Mohammad Ali said the rules were promulgated in line with the court order.

“One or two errors may be there, but there is no deviation from the court directives,” Ali said.

The bench then asked him to minutely re-examine the rules, get rid of the flaws and issue a gazette notification on the amended CrPC.

It also wanted to know when the ordinance of the CrPC would be issued.

At that point, Mohammad Ali asked for two weeks’ time to complete the amendments to the CrPC.

But unsatisfied with the answer, the court reminded the AG that he had earlier sought 10 days for the work to be done. It said it couldn’t wait for ages.

President Iajuddin Ahmed approved the four rules of the judicial services on January 16. The following day, the AG explained the rules to the Appellate Division that after a hearing ordered the government to submit all rules before it by January 21.