The High Court on Monday questioned the legality of putting an arrested leader of Jatiyatabadi Juba Dal, the youth front of the main opposition Bangladesh Nationalist Party, from Jashore in bar fetters and handcuffs while he was receiving treatment at a government hospital in Dhaka.
The court issued a rule asking the government authorities concerned to explain why the law enforcers' action should not be declared illegal.
At the same time, the HC ordered the government to shift the Juba Dal leader Aminur Rahman to Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujib Medical University in 10 days for better treatment.
A bench of justice Mustafa Zaman Islam and justice Md Atabullah passed the order responding to a writ petition filed by Nahida Sultana, the wife of the Juba Dal leader.
During the hearing on Sunday, the bench had criticised the successive governments for not amending the colonial-era Jail Code prescribes putting bar-fetter of detained inmates as former attorney general AJ Mohammad Ali had criticised the present government to keep opposition leaders in bar-fetters arbitrary.
The court observed that shackles are generally put on hardened criminals.
The writ petition was filed with news clippings with photos showing Aminur Rahman sleeping in bar-fetters handcuffs on the floor of the National Institute of Cardiovascular Diseases in Dhaka on November 28.
Aminur’s photos have gone viral on the social media and drew the ire from different quarters.
The police arrested Aminur, an assistant professor of management at the Amdabad Degree College in Jashore, from the college campus on November 2 and sent him to the Jashore Central Jail over four cases under the Special Powers Act filed with the Jashore Kotwali police, following BNP’s foiled rally of October 28.
He was later shifted to the Dhaka Central Jail from where he was referred to the National Heart Institute in the capital.
Aminur, who was released from the hospital after 13 days, is now detained in jail in connection with other case, after he was granted bail in the first case, his wife told the High Court on Sunday.
