Bar Council demands more HC benches

UNB, Dhaka :
The Bangladesh Bar Council, a statutory body regulating the lawyers, on Sunday urged the Chief Justice to increase the number of High Court benches for the disposal of petitions seeking pre-arrest bail.
Addressing a press conference, Bar Council vice-chairman Khandker Mahbub Hossain said police have started filing cases on large scale with police stations across the country against political leaders and workers.
Sometimes, the names of the accused remain unknown, resulting in harassment of innocent people by the police, he alleged, adding that police meanwhile have indulged in ‘arrest business’ threatening people to implicate them in the cases filed against unknown accused if they do not bribe them.
Khandker Mahbub, also an advisor to the BNP chairperson, said under the circumstances, a large number the political leaders and workers fearing arrest thronged the High Court to seek ad interim bails.
He urged the government to refrain from arresting or harassing anyone politically without following the due process of law.
Supreme Court Bar Association (SCBA) secretary Barrister Mahbub Uddin Khokon claimed that police so far filed cases before or after the January 5 parliamentary polls implicating 7,00,000 leaders and workers of BNP.