[mukto-mona] None of the cases filed on charges of war crimes under the EPR!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

The High Court in a landmark judgement yesterday quashed all trial proceedings of the Tk 3 crore extortion case and also declared without lawful authority and unconstitutional the government action incorporating the case under the EPR. In the judgement the HC bench observed that the sections of EPR curtailing the court jurisdiction to grant bail to the accused persons in the cases were ultra vires of the Constitution.

The High Court has delivered what the general public would consider an obvious judgment. The court has indeed upheld a simple legal point that no law covers any offence committed before its enactment. What we really find baffling and difficult to understand is why the government failed to foresee the situation that has arisen now. The government's legal advisers should have been able to comprehend that the case would be untenable.

The wide-ranging implications of the HC judgment are not hard to see.They could have been tried under the existing laws of the country without creating any controversy.We cannot but question the wisdom of the government's legal advisers who clearly failed to see in advance the weaknesses and limitations of applying the EPR, when the existing laws could have taken care of the corruption cases.

The lesson to be learnt from it is that any shortsighted attempt to take a shortcut in a legal matter might backfire and undermine the whole edifice of the justice system. Just one instance of the application of the EPR being legally untenable may bring a huge number of cases under question. The government should not have been in such a legal corner for which its own legal expertise has to be blamed.

 

However, none of the cases filed on charges of war crimes during the tenure of the present caretaker government were not placed under the Emergency Powers Rules.

 

Gopal Sengupta

Canada

gopalsengupta@aol.com

 

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