Lawyer served show-cause notice
The day was September 18 and the workload was immense because it was the last working day before the High Court went into a month-long vacation.
What appears to be a clever selection of timing because everyone had apparently switched to the vacation mode, Supreme Court lawyer Abdus Samad moved a petition seeking bail for five accused yaba traders.
He produced documents which showed the five suspected yaba traders, arrested in the capital’s Mirpur area on July 1, had in their possession only 243 tablets.
Assistant Attorney General (AAG) Mohammad Ali Jinnah, who represented the state on that day, was apparently too busy to notice that the five had been arrested for possessing 19,000 yaba pills, not just 243 – at least that was what a police press release, issued a day after the arrest, also said.
After hearing on the petition, a two-member HC bench comprising Justice Md Nuruzzaman and Justice Mustafa Zaman Islam granted the bail and the five were released thereafter.
Explaining the judgement, Jinnah said the bail was granted because possessing 243 yaba pills appeared to be less severe an offence to the court than possessing 19,000.
However, on September 25, Jinnah eventually found out that Samad had forged several documents while moving the bail petition.
On September 27, he brought the matter to the Supreme Court’s attention, alleging that Samad had produced fake certified copies of the first information report (FIR), charge sheet and seizure list for seeking bail for his five clients.
The same day, a special High Court bench was formed to hear on Jinnah’s submission. The two judges, who had granted the bail in the first place, were included in that bench.
Yesterday, that bench, cancelled the bail, asked authorities concerned to issue fresh arrest warrants against the five and show-caused Abdus Samad to explain within October 19 why he had hidden the information.
The judges asked the SC registrar to form a probe committee to find out more about the alleged forgery. They also asked the registrar to sue or take appropriate actions against the person that certified the forged documents.
AAG Jinnah told the Dhaka Tribune that a man named Shahadat Hossain Jony certified Samad’s documents as authentic. The only available information about him is that he is the son of Mohammad Hossain from Teknaf in Cox’s Bazar and his national ID number is 1992989158072.
According to the original case documents, police recovered 3,000 pills of the contraband drug from Hasan and 4,000 pieces each from the other four. Police said in a press release that the recovered pills weighed 1.71kg whose approximate price was Tk60 lakh.
However, the documents that Samad produced said police had recovered only 40 pills from Sohel, 50 from Ferdous, 45 from Mohsin, 60 from Mostafa and 48 from Hasan. Jinnah said Samad moved the bail petition on the last working day before the SC’s month-long vacation started on September 19.
“There was an immense pressure of cases on the last working day. So I did not notice that the counsel for the bail petitioners provided false information,” he said.
Jinnah’s petition reads: “Accused-petitioners were enlarged on bail by this Hon’ble Court by using the false and forged certified copies of the FIR, charge sheet and seizure list of the Mirpur Model Police Station.”
Rebuking Samad, the court said: “How long have you been practicing law for? What you used to do before [starting to practice law]? You will give satisfactory answer to the show cause [notice] otherwise we will take necessary steps against you.”
Samad later told the Dhaka Tribune, that Supreme Court clerk Boni Amin brought the case to him. “I stood for the accused without checking the authenticity of the documents. The bail petition was prepared by the SC clerk.”
Boni Amid however could not be reached over his mobile phone until 11pm yesterday.
SM Rezaul Karim, former secretary of the Supreme Court Bar Association, told the Dhaka Tribune that if found guilty, Samad might have to face jail terms of up to seven years for forgery and cancellation of license.
He however explained that the person who certified the false documents was to be the one to blame. “A lawyer generally trusts that documents that his clients produce,” he said.
He also alleged that a group of SC clerks had been running an illegal business of preparing fake documents to help criminals.
Source: Dhaka Tribune
