Dhaka court issues arrest order of former chief justice

By SM Najmus Sakib

DHAKA, Bangladesh (AA) - A Dhaka court on Sunday issued arrest warrants against the former chief justice and 10 others in connection, including some former and current senior bank officials of a local bank, with charges of embezzlement and money laundering.

The unprecedented order also directed country’s police to report on the arrests by Jan. 22 in the graft charges brought by the Anti-Corruption Commission (ACC), the institutional body to fight corruption in Bangladesh.

After an investigation, the ACC approved charges against former Justice Surendra Kumar Sinha in a graft case in December 2019.

The incident is the first of its kind of issuing an arrest warrant against a chief justice in Bangladesh.

“Court accepted charges against offense under ‘embezzlement and money laundering’. And, court issued arrest warrants against all 11, including former chief justice as they were fugitive from justice,” ACC's lawyer Khurshid Alam Khan told Anadolu Agency.

The court order came based on the country’s legal process, he said, adding that police authority was asked to report the court by Jan. 22 on the arrests.

Justice Sinha, the first chief justice from a minority ethnic community, allegedly resigned amid disagreements between the country’s Supreme Court (SC) and government.

The disagreements appeared the SC scrapped an amendment which allowed the parliament to remove SC judges.

Later, amid huge criticism from the government, Sinha went to Singapore on "health ground", and then to Canada, and finally resigned from his position in November 2017.

Since then, he has been abroad and is currently in the U.S.