The rule of law and judicial corruption cannot go together, the High Court (HC) observed in a verdict.
If the judicial officers and other employees are corrupt, then the rule of law will be confined to the books, it will never be materialised, the top court observed in the verdict that upheld the declaration of three Kakrail houses as abandoned properties, scrapping a lower court orders passed 25 years ago on ownership of the houses.
The HC also asked the deputy commissioner of Dhaka to hand over the houses to Neuro Developmental Disability Protection Trust within three months so that no fraudsters can seize the properties again.
Angered by the lower court verdict, the HC further said, "The judiciary is the last place of common people's hope and aspiration. When the judges of this last shelter sell a verdict through corruption, then the common people really don't have any place to go. Then they get frustrated, angry, upset and keep looking for alternatives."
"If we, the judiciary, fail as a last resort of the common people, then they will be forced to look for alternatives, which could not be imaginable. So, now is the time to radically reform our judiciary, the last refuge of the people, by eradicating the root causes of corruption and turn it into a credible institution," also read the verdict.
"A corruption-free judiciary is one of the key conditions for the rule of law. The rule of law cannot be imagined without a corruption-free judiciary. Therefore, if all the stakeholders concerned do not take the necessary steps to build a corruption-free judiciary without delay, there is a danger can be seen that even good judges might be harmed," it cautioned.
The HC bench of justices Md Ashraful Kamal and Razik-Al-Jalil delivered the verdict after hearing two writ petitions filed challenging four lower court orders regarding the ownership of the three houses in the city's Kakrail area.
The short judgement was delivered by the HC on Dec 11, 2019, and the full text of the verdict published in the website recently.
The High Court scrapped the verdicts delivered by the 1st settlement court of Dhaka on Nov 27, 1995, in four settlement cases and upheld the declaration of holding No. 56, 56/1 and 57 at Kakrail as abandoned properties.
Indicating the judgement of the first settlement court of Dhaka, the HC said that our judiciary had never seen such an unprecedented and fraudulent order.
The High Court said that the first settlement court of Dhaka delegated the ownership of holding No. 56, 56/1 and 57 at Kakrail to some people by delivering a fictitious verdict based on some documents that did not exist.
Registrar general of the Supreme Court has been asked to hand over a copy of the HC verdict specially to Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina after constraining it in book form so that she can take initiatives for protecting the abandoned properties from the grabbing by the cohorts of the pro-Pakistan people.
Advocate Shihab Uddin Mahmud appeared in the court on behalf of the respondent, while deputy attorney general Wayes Al Haruni and assistant attorney general Mahfuzur Rahman Likhon represented the state.
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