Three Supreme Court judges have not yet written 550 verdicts and orders they delivered in open courts at different times before going on retirement, said the registrar’s office.
Among the defaulters, Justice AHM Shamsuddin Choudhury has not yet written 161 verdicts though retired as an Appellate Division judge on October 1, 2015, said court officials.
Despite repeated reminders from the Chief Justice, the retired apex court judge did not return the court records of the 161 cases which he took home, they said.
The 161 pending full verdicts include 12 relating to criminal appeals which were heard and disposed of in 2013, said court officials.
Several appellants are serving jail terms even after the apex court set aside their convictions as the jail authorities were unable to release them until getting copies of the full verdict, said the officials.
They said that Justice Shamsuddin was completely free for two months before his retirement to write the verdicts pending with him.
For one full month Justice Shamsuddin was allocated no courts in September and he enjoyed SC vacation for one full month in October, they said.
When asked about the failure, Justice Shamsuddin told New Age that the Chief Justice, ‘is not allowing me to write the verdicts by keeping my chamber closed since my retirement,’ He also said that all his staff were withdrawn.
He said he took the case records home as he had no chamber.
He said that only 75 orders in civil matters, and not 161verdicts, were pending with him.
He also said that since writing each order covers three pages he can write them just in two days.
He said that no verdict on criminal matter was pending with him.
Until Sunday, over 81 pending verdicts and 300 orders, pronounced in open courts between December 3, 2015 and January 19, 2016, were not written by Justice Sharif Uddin Chaklader, who retired from the High Court Division on January 19, said the court officials.
Justice Sharif has not also written several other full verdicts that were pronounced earlier, they said.
Justice Sharif, however, told New Age Tuesday that now only 81 verdicts were pending with him as he signed 300 pending orders in last two days.
But he declined to comment whether the verdicts written by a judge after retirement would hold legal and constitutional validity.
Former Chief Justice Md Muzammel Hossain has also neither written nor deposited nine verdicts of the Appellate Division in a little over a year since he retired on January 16, 2015.
A full verdict, pending since 2011 when it was pronounced in open court, relates to the places of lower court judges in the Warrant of Precedent.
He wrote several verdicts after he took the retirement, said court officials.
But Justice Nozrul Islam Chowdhury set an example by writing all the verdicts pending with him just before he was retired as High Court Division judge in December, said court officials.
Keeping so many verdicts pending is ‘simply ridiculous’ for a judge, said Supreme Court lawyer Rafique-ul Huq.
But he didn’t mind if a judge wrote verdicts after retirement on matters disposed of on his or her last working day.
He praised Justice Nozrul as a good judge and said he set an example by writing all the verdicts pending with him before taking retirement.
The Supreme Court of Pakistan in a verdict delivered on April 28, 1964 in the case of Qazi Mehar Din versus Mst. Murad Begum ruled that judgments written and signed by judges after retirement were functus officio –‘No judgments’.
The same verdict said after being relieved of office no judge should be allowed to do with any judicial work of the Court over which be previously presided.
The same court struck down as not valid a verdict written and signed by High Court judge Ghulam Murtaza Shah after he handed over charge and became a minister.
Source: New Age
